A vital history of organizing within and beyond the walls of women's prisons in the 1970s, illuminating a crucial chapter in today's abolition feminist struggles.

This new edition of an award-winning book features a foreword from acclaimed scholar-activist Sarah Haley and an afterword by Thuma.

During the 1970s, grassroots women activists in and outside of prisons forged a radical politics against gender violence and incarceration. Scholar-activist Emily L. Thuma traces the making of this anticarceral feminism at the intersections of struggles for racial and economic justice, imprisoned and institutionalized people's rights, and gender and sexual liberation.

chronicles the organizing, ideas, and influence of those who placed criminalized and marginalized women at the heart of their antiviolence mobilizations. This activism confronted a "tough on crime" political agenda and clashed with the mainstream women's movement's strategy of resorting to the criminal legal system as a solution to sexual and domestic violence.

reveals a vibrant culture of opposition to interpersonal and state violence that both transforms our understanding of 1970s social movements and illuminates the history of present struggles for transformative justice.

Awards:

Winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies

Shortlisted for the Organization of American Historians' Nickliss Prize and the American Studies Association's Romero Prize