Mimi E. Kim

• Ph.D.
• Associate Professor at California State University, Long Beach

Racial injustice at the intersections of interpersonal and state violence sets the stage for this examination of mainstream responses to domestic and sexual violence. At one end of this continuum is carceral feminism, a term signaling feminist reliance upon law enforcement as a dominant intervention strategy. At the other end is a growing tide of r...

The development of the feminist anti-domestic violence movement in the United States illustrates the trajectory from a social movement field devoid of carceral involvement to one fully occupied by the agents of crime control. Countering a narrative that often begins with the Violence against Women Act of 1994, this study demonstrates how the roots...

History reveals that the pathway toward carceral feminism was fraught with contradictions. Feminist reform strategies that appeared progressive devolved into mandates contributing to the policies of mass incarceration; frameworks meant to disavow racist myths of violence inherent to communities of color fueled color-blind narratives that cloaked wh...

This paper addresses social work’s place in the movement to “defund the police.” We argue that social work’s collaboration with police and use of policing constitutes carceral social work. In defining carceral social work, we specify the ways in which coercive and punitive practices are used to manage Black, Indigenous, other people of color and po...

In the United States, the contemporary feminist movement against gender-based violence started in the early 1970s, just as ideologies and policies supporting mass criminalization launched what became a five-fold rise in U.S. rates of incarceration. Since the new millennium, people of color have taken the lead in re-envisioning fundamental notions o...

In the 1980s, feminist activism to challenge gender-based violence in the United States took a turn from radical grassroots formations towards institutions increasingly reliant on law enforcement. The embrace of policing as the guarantor of the safety of women and children became not only emblematic of US gender justice but also has been exported g...

Since October 7, 2023, the world has witnessed Israel’s unrelenting mass assault against the people of Gaza, killing more than 37,000 Palestinians. The response to this genocide in most sectors of professional society has largely been one of denial and suppression of solidarity with Palestine, unveiling extremes of the longstanding Palestine except...

Prison abolition has emerged as a new framework for critical analysis, policies, and practices with implications for social welfare. Mobilized through a series of social movement events and formations from the late 1990s, prison abolition has taken on public prominence since the summer of 2020 and unprecedented U.S. and global protests of racialize...

The continued presence of racism and white supremacy has risen to a crisis level as today’s global pandemic, police abuse targeting Black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC) communities, and mass urban uprisings rock the nation. This article presents a case study of a West Coast school of social work that has carried out a five-year syste...

This article addresses social work’s place in the movement to “defund the police.” We argue that social work’s collaboration with police and use of policing constitutes carceral social work. In defining carceral social work, we specify the ways in which coercive and punitive practices are used to manage Black, Indigenous, other people of color, and...

This opening essay introduces Mobilization’s twenty-fifth anniversary issue on intersectionality and social movement research. We reference several works in the field that offer insights into the multiplicity of iterations, practices, and attempts to do intersectionality at the level of social movements, mass mobilization and movement research. We...

Responding to the call to “shift the lens” and expand gender-based violence remedies beyond individualized direct services and law enforcement remedies, anti-violence providers have struggled to redefine and redirect intervention approaches. This implementation study leverages the framework of implementation science to investigate an exploratory st...

This paper aims to acknowledge essential matters to be taken under consideration when working with Muslim Americans in social services in an effort to provide culturally appropriate services and promote social justice. Interviews were conducted with service providers who identify themselves as formerly or currently Muslim and have previously or are...

In the post-war period, many Westernized countries advanced toward more rehabilitative and welfarist ideals informing crime policies. These ideals centered on the offending individual, not the victim. This was soon to change. Victim compensation programs were one of the first initiatives taken for victims of crime with the first established in the...

In the past several years, the U.S. feminist anti-violence social movement’s reliance on criminalization has weakened under the weight of mounting criticism of what is now known as “carceral feminism.” This recent shift towards the consideration of explicitly anti-carceral practices and policies within the mainstream feminist anti-violence movement...

This case study discusses the Survivor-Centered Advocacy (SCA) Project, a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project that convened anti-violence advocates from culturally specific communities to design and implement research. The project used a unique approach to build grassroots research capacity and center survivors of intimate partner...

This essay provides a synthesis of criminological and social welfare theoretical frameworks, along with empirical data illuminating the links between crime policy and welfare policy. It also reviews current debates regarding the extent to which European countries are undergoing a shift toward more punitive welfare or crime policies. Building upon G...

The criminalization of violence against women over the past forty years represents both social movement success and the paradoxical alignment of feminism with increasingly punitive carceral policies. This historical analysis of the shifting social movement field during its formative years from 1973 to 1986 refutes dominant social movement paradigms...

This chapter explores the complex and evolving relationship between a community-based domestic violence program and faith-based institutions (FBIs) within an immigrant community. Shimtuh, Korean Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Program, a program of a Korean immigrant multiservice center in Oakland, California, offers a case study of an innovat...

This article critically reflects upon the social work field engaging the issue of domestic violence and its relationship to the criminal legal system in the USA. The historical trajectory of the contemporary battered womens movement beginning in the 1970s parallels the rise of criminalisation and mass incarceration particularly impacting marginalis...

This chapter introduces the "community-based intervention approach" of Creative Interventions, an organization established to create and promote collective interventions to interpersonal violence. This approach is part of a growing effort to create alternative strategies which do not rely on social services or the state. The chapter opens with a co...

Identities constructed on gender, generation, and culture simultaneously generate rationalizations for violence and feminist praxis for countering women abuse and child maltreatment. This chapter opens dialogue between the authors' two theories of change for stopping family violence-widening the circle and creative interventions. Both engage the fa...

The lotus lily is a symbol of beauty and tranquility that rises up and breaks through the muddy darkness. Like the flower, we can break through the destructive cycle of domestic violence. Asian and Pacific Islander (API) women remain silent survivors of intimate violence. Hidden in violence statistics, unheard over crisis lines, unseen in mainstrea...

Recent literature on immigration and immigrants reveals a shift in language, concepts, and theories that reflect the growing influence of global capitalism on transnational migrants. Largely deriving from an imperialism or world systems theory framework, the literature varies widely in its scope of concern, assessment of the current and future impa...

Are the solutions to violence against women and children to be found via state interventions – through the police, prosecution and imprisonment? Or are alternative, grassroots, community-based responses required? These are questions being asked by many women of colour in the USA. Creative Interventions is an organisation based in Oakland, Californi...