Book review: Vera Lopez and Lisa Pasko (eds), Latinas in the Criminal Justice System: Victims, Targets and Offenders
| DOI | 10.1177/13624806221089669 |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
current Scottish situation, where there is political will to reduce imprisonment and prison
service management is intent on becoming desistance focused, with neither of these
coming to pass, might be possible to explain only with reference to further factors.
This gives space to future comparative researchers to decide on their own lines of
enquiry, while showing how the rare in-depth analysis over time presented here is essen-
tial in understanding differences in how countries punish. While this book should attract a
wide readership, then, it also offers those in Scotland and Ireland something more. As an
observer and researcher of imprisonment in Scotland, it is fascinating to see that judges’
perceptions of seeing prison as a last resort has a long history, which raises the question if
this trope arises in other countries in the same way. Moreover, anyone interested in
helping to change an imprisonment regime needs to understand its past. In this
context, it is disheartening to learn that the parsimonious use of imprisonment and the
individualised help to overcome its harms, both advocated by current criminologists as
well as those in the past, was seen as a failed experiment in Ireland by the 1990s.
The brilliance of this book lies in the wide variety of materials it pulls together while at
the same time maintaining focus and relevance. In doing so, it makes an important con-
tribution to our thinking about the sociology of punishment, eschewing large scale broad
comparison for a comparative analysis that is grounded in the history and culture under-
lying each country’s imprisonment regime.
Vera Lopez and Lisa Pasko (eds), Latinas in the Criminal Justice System: Victims, Targets and Offenders,
New York University Press: New York, 2021; 369 pp.: 9781479804634, $99.00 (hbk),
9781479891962 $35.00 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Kayla Marie Martensen, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Latinas in the Criminal Justice System: Victims, Targets and Offenders highlights the
complexities of system-involvement for Latinx-identified women, young women, and
girls
1
—a demographic that is rarely centered in criminology research. Intentionally,
the editors set out to center Latinas’experiences, without comparing or using an add
and stir approach often criticized by feminist criminology when women are added to a
study but not centered in the work. Amplifying a Chicana feminist epistemology, the
editors “value and accept Latinas’realities as the foundation of knowledge about their
experiences”(p. 3). The book declares to take a social justice approach and authors of
this edited text are encouraged to apply an intersectional framework to their individual
area of study. Acknowledging the ways that multiple marginalized identities often
leave Latinas at a crux between victim and “offender”, and increasingly “illegal”due
to immigration status, the editors emphasize the need to address how race, ethnicity,
legal status, gender, and carceral status impact the experiences of system-involved
Latinas. Several authors also highlight how age impacts perspectives of system-involved
Latinas, and the authors of Chapter 2 center sexual orientation in their intersectional
work. The editors note that authors were not instructed to take a critical perspective, none-
theless, most of the research presented in the book is critical of the role of the carceral
state in the lives of system-impacted Latinas (p. 6). Thoughtfully, the book is broken
Book reviews 351
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