In her article “Against Carceral Feminism,” Vikki Law criticizes currents of feminism that call for more policing and harsher sentences for domestic violence.  She shows how this ‘carceral feminism’ (advocated primarily by white, middle-class feminists) justifies the expansion of the prison industrial complex, obscures the violence of policing and incarceration, and fails to address the connections between gender-based violence and economic inequality, lack of affordable housing, racism, and the structural violence perpetuated against communities of colour.

Carceral feminism abets the growth of the state’s worst functions, while obscuring the shrinking of its best. At the same time, it conveniently ignores the anti-violence efforts and organizing by those who have always known that criminalized responses pose further threats rather than promises of safety.

Law points to a number of alternatives to carceral feminism, developed primarily by people of colour who have never been able to rely on policing and prisons for safety, including INCITE!, Critical Resistance, Creative Interventions, and The Revolution Starts at Home. In the video below, Law unpacks the roots of gender-based violence, and the ways that policing not only fails to stop gender-based violence, but often makes things worse for women (especially black and brown women of colour).  She talks about organizations and communities that are creating grassroots alternatives to cops and policing, which effectively curb gender-based violence without relying on prisons, policing, and the state.