Loyalt\u27s Reward - A Felony Conviction: Recent Prosecutions of High-Status Female Offenders

This Article analyzes white-collar female crime and compares several high profile cases to those of regular female offenders. It uses government statistical data on female crime to paint a portrait of the female offender. It then compares the prosecution of street-level and white-collar female offenders. The Article discusses the prosecutions of Martha Stewart, Betty, Vinson, and Lea Fastow. The Article argues that these women often share a similar trait of committing the crime out of loyalty to a man engaged in wrong-doing

The Violent State: Black Women\u27s Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence

Black women have a very specific history with the state and law enforcement that is not replicated among other women’s communities, and it is that unique situation that is the focus of this Article. Part I of this Article explores the historical roots of Black women’s interaction with the state. Part II of this Article is broken into two sections. The first will cover police killings of Black women. The second part of the section will explore the conditions under which Black women are physically assaulted by the police. Part III of the Article seeks to highlight when the police rape and sexually assault Black women. Part IV begins with police violence within the home. The second section in Part IV will focus on violence that occurs when the police respond to Black women who complain of abuse at the hands of an intimate partner. The plight of Black women who defend themselves from the batterers and are prosecuted for murder will close out Part IV. Part V explains why it matters specifically to Black women that their trauma be acknowledged. Secondly, I explore why mainstream anti-violence groups and other feminists organizations should be concerned about what is happening to Black women specifically. Finally, the Article concludes by highlighting why moving the discussion of violence against Black women from the dusty corners of isolation closer to the center of policy planning, drafting of legislation, and political brainstorming matters to both Black women and to the larger feminist and anti-violence communities

Loyalty\u27s Reward — A Felony Conviction: Recent Prosecutions of High-Status Female Offenders

Between 2001 and 2004, six high-status women were charged with crimes in connection with corporate criminal cases. The public is familiar with some of them, although not all of their cases have been covered equally in the press. With the exception of an occasional article now and then mentioning the exploding rates of female incarceration, women\u27s crime tends to be invisible to the public eye. The statistical data the government collects and analyzes on women and crime will be discussed. This article will focus on the prosecution of the individual cases of Lea Fastow, Betty Vinson, and Martha Stewart. Their cases, and where relevant, their life circumstances, and the issue of whether loyalty played a role in their offending, will be examined and contrasted with the experiences of female offenders who are not of high status. Rapper Lil\u27 Kim\u27s prosecution will highlight the problems of a female offender of color who has high status but whose acts are deemed to be street crimes. The article concludes by suggesting that although the high-status female white-collar offender does not share the personal characteristics of the regular female offender, the two groups of women share a common pathway to crime— loyalty to a man engaged in wrongdoing. Moreover, white-collar female offenders do not differ significantly from many women who are incarcerated for street crimes. Lil\u27 Kim\u27s case offers an example of how strikingly close a street crime offender can be to a white-collar offender

Piercing the Prison Uniform of Invisibility for Black Female Inmates

In Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women In Prison, Professor Paula Johnson has written about the most invisible of incarcerated women — incarcerated African American women. The number of women incarcerated in the United States increased by seventy-five percent between 1986 and 1991. Of these women, a disproportionate number are black women. The percentages vary by region and by the nature of institution (county jail, state prison or federal facility), but the bottom line remains the same. In every instance, black women are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their percentage in the general population. In Inner Lives, Professor Johnson offers African American incarcerated women an opportunity to push back the veil of invisibility and to claim for themselves the right to control their stories and their own images. The women talk about the strengths they had to have to survive sexual abuse, physical abuse, lack of resources and drug addiction. They speak of the strength required to survive not only incarceration, but the awareness that they harmed their victims, the victims\u27 families, their own family members, and themselves. The stories test the limits of our understanding of individual responsibility on the one hand, and wholesale societal failure to provide a safety net for some of our most vulnerable citizens on the other

Full Legal Representation for the Poor: The Clash Between Lawyer Values and Client Worthiness

This article seeks to expand the scope of our understanding of values and their connection to the work of poverty lawyers. The article explores the literature on poverty and moral worthiness. In order to bring clarity to the discussion, it examines social science research on defining values and detailing how they can affect behavior. Prof. Jacobs describes the reactions of clinical students to a classroom exercise, which asked them to describe the legal representation they would provide to hypothetical clients. This article describes how the link between students\u27 values and broader societal beliefs affect the practices of the bar and discusses the proposition that the legal community will continue to see the poor as unworthy of full legal representation until society can envision the poor as part of our moral community. Finally, Prof. Jacobs offers suggestions for fuller studies into whether poverty itself encourages lawyers to temper the quality of representation given to the poor

People From The Footnotes: The Missing Element in Client-Centered Counseling

In this article, I explore the way in which race neutral training of interviewing and counseling skills may actually lead to continued marginalization of clients of color. Part I of this article examines the racially neutral client-centered counseling models to highlight the difficulties the models engender by failing to incorporate the concept of race particularly as it relates to the models\u27 treatment of the difficult client. In Part II, I look at the work of a fellow clinician and ethnographist by revisiting his case analysis to point out the ways in which a race neutral application of client-centered counseling worked to the disadvantage of a black client. Part III explores the empirical data gathered by social scientists operating in a counseling capacity, which demonstrate that race plays a significant role in counselor-client interaction. The data reveal that the race and behavior of the counselor can have an equally serious impact on the relationship as can the race and behavior of the client. Part IV identifies areas of counselor behavior which can be impacted by remedial measures. Finally, in Part V, I suggest combining client-centered counseling skills with a module I call Cross-Cultural Lawyer and Student Self-Awareness Training to enable us to take advantage of interdisciplinary work to broaden our ability to teach effective interviewing and counseling skills

Sometimes They Don\u27t Die: Can Criminal Justice Reform Measures Help Halt Police Sexual Assault on Black Women?

In the eighteen months between March 2019 and August 2020, at least eight Black women were murdered by the police. Breonna Taylor was one of them. Officer Brett Hankison, one of the three officers who murdered Breonna Taylor, was eventually discharged from the Louisville Police Department. In the memo discharging him, the police chief cited behavior that amounted to an extreme indifference to the value of human life: Hankison blindly fired ten rounds into the home of Ms. Taylor\u27s neighbor. Additionally, in the aftermath of Ms. Taylor\u27s death, two women came forward and accused Hankison of sexually assaulting them while he was in uniform. Breonna Taylor\u27s case highlights the intersection of police violence and sexual violence against Black women. Police who are accused of brutal violence often have histories of misconduct, with numerous complaints from civilians. For many women, the police misconduct is sexual assault. The women don\u27t die, but the assault strips away their dignity and sense of security. This paper will challenge the belief that police sexual misconduct is an infrequent, hidden crime. In fact, it is a common occurrence and is allowed to continue in most police departments. Both adult women and children are victims of police sexual misconduct. The unwillingness of federal and state authorities to tackle this issue forced researchers and journalists to create their own databases of police officers who commit crimes, including sexual misconduct. Our nation is primed to tackle the issue of police reform in a way it has not been in recent years.This paper will argue that unless police reform efforts look beyond a narrow, male-centered understanding of police violence, the opportunity to create reform that helps protect Black women from police sexual misconduct will be lost

Piercing the Prison Uniform of Invisibility for Black Female Inmates

In Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women In Prison, Professor Paula Johnson has written about the most invisible of incarcerated women — incarcerated African American women. The number of women incarcerated in the United States increased by seventy-five percent between 1986 and 1991. Of these women, a disproportionate number are black women. The percentages vary by region and by the nature of institution (county jail, state prison or federal facility), but the bottom line remains the same. In every instance, black women are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their percentage in the general population. In Inner Lives, Professor Johnson offers African American incarcerated women an opportunity to push back the veil of invisibility and to claim for themselves the right to control their stories and their own images. The women talk about the strengths they had to have to survive sexual abuse, physical abuse, lack of resources and drug addiction. They speak of the strength required to survive not only incarceration, but the awareness that they harmed their victims, the victims\u27 families, their own family members, and themselves. The stories test the limits of our understanding of individual responsibility on the one hand, and wholesale societal failure to provide a safety net for some of our most vulnerable citizens on the other