Compelled to Crime

by Beth E. Richie

Compelled to Crime tells the stories of battered African American women incarcerated in a New York city correctional facility and explores what happens when the criminal justice system is introduced as a repressive force in their lives. Borrowing from the legal notion of 'gender entrapment', Beth Richie details the ways in which African American women are hemmed into the corners of U.S. society by virtue of their vulnerability to men's violence, and penalized for behaviors that are prescribed by societal mores of appropriate gender roles. Often misrepresented and misunderstood, these women have been physically battered, sexually assaulted, and emotionally abused. These devastating circumstances represent a position from which there is little escape. Desperation leads them into illegal activities, and the cycle is only perpetuated by a legal system that continues to penalize these women and deny them access to the counseling and services they so desperately need to change their lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Race, Sociology, Gender, Theory, Law

200 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 1995

Reviews

[Jennifer J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for contemporary feminists and advocates of criminal justice reform.

I picked up this book after seeing Michelle Alexander refer to Richie's work so often in The New Jim Crow. This is a fantastic piece of qualitative research that smartly unpacks the intersectional realities of Black women with a history of domestic abuse who have been imprisoned by the U.S. criminal justice system. Richie's project is based on numerous interviews with women in Rikers who are considered in 3 different classes: Black battered women, Black non-battered women, and white battered women. Thanks to her keen and clean methodological approach and her ability to deftly engage social and psychological theories simultaneously, Richie is able to generate and present a data-driven theory of abuse-driven criminogenisis that is so clean and thorough and compelling that I don't know if I'll ever be able to un-see it.

Richie does such a fantastic job summarizing her arguments in Ch 6 that I won't do it again here. You really should just read the book. But I will say that it's no surprise to me now that Kimberlé Crenshaw blurbed this book (her enthusiastic compliments for the book grace the back cover), and it's an enormous disappointment that this piece hasn't gotten more attention. It's really good and very illuminating.

[Elsie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most insightful and mind altering reads I’ve ever engaged with

[Suzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I set this book aside a few times because it was so harrowing. She interviews women on Rikers Island, some of them are charged with homicide because their husbands killed their kids, horrible stuff like that. Her theory of gender entrapment is really sharp and she contrasts the interviews with Black battered women on Rikers with interviews of white battered women on Rikers and Black non-battered women on Rikers, proving a particular pattern of gender entrapment that's only among the Black battered women, who had high self esteem in their families, then were shut out of opportunities in school and by employers, then tried to base their identity on building a traditional home, and were loyal to their men in the face of racial oppression and the police.

It could be a powerful critique of what is often heard, that Black men are more oppressed than Black women, which is based on some particular things like college, career, and incarceration statistics that don't tell the whole story. The Black women in this book felt strong and felt sorry for their men at first, allowing them to be more vulnerable to abuse than they realized, as the author explains it. As I went through the book, I tried to be very conscious of not inserting a white feminist reading that would divide Black women from Black men in a false solidarity with white women. To me it seems to make even more clear than ever the reality that white feminists need to fight racism against Black men -- both for its own sake and because it hurts Black women so directly.

[david · Rating 4 out of 5]

almost 15 years later, it's still amazing. it should be a classic. while of the arguments may feel a bit dated, it's only because this text and its ideas have been so influential within social movements. one could argue that this book laid the intellectual foundation for INCITE! the careful and meticulous framing and story telling that Richie does is compelling and irrefutable, even for thsoe who don't agree with her broader conclusions. this should also be a case study in how scholarship and organizing come together to shift consciousness. the best of the Black Studies tradition at work!

[Victoria Law · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is intense, painful and, if you've survived violence, triggering.