- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care
About This Book
At the height of the opiate epidemic, Tennessee lawmakers made it a crime for a pregnant woman to transmit narcotics to a fetus. They promised that charging new mothers with this crime would help them receive the treatment and support they often desperately need. InProsecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care, Wendy Bach describes the law's actual effect through meticulous examination of the cases of 120 women who were prosecuted for this crime. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, Bach demonstrates that both prosecuting 'fetal assault', and institutionalizing the all-too-common idea that criminalization is a road to care, lead at best to clinically dangerous and corrupt treatment, and at worst, and far more often, to an insidious smokescreen obscuring harsh punishment.Urgent, instructive, andhumane, this retelling demands we stop criminalizing care and instead move towards robust and respectful systems that meet the real needs of families in poor communities.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-title page
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I A Problem, a Solution, and a Quick Dive into History and Theory
- Part II Care As a Smokescreen
- Part III Criminalized Care
- Part IV Rejecting Criminalization and Reconceptualizing the Relationship between Punishment and Care
- Index