Latina girls and women have often been invisible in the U.S. legal systems of juvenile justice, criminal justice, and immigration as well as in the broader criminological research. Latinas in the Criminal Justice System: Victims, Targets, and Offenders remedies this deficit and investigates the histories, backgrounds, and struggles of system-impacted Latinas. It shares understandings about Latina
... [Show full abstract] girls’ and women’s experiences with victimization, law violations, and systems of surveillance and punishment. As a project of social justice, Latinas in the Criminal Justice System addresses how ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, legal status, and/or carceral status shape perceptions, interactions, and system involvement. Employing a variety of methodologies and data, Latinas in the Criminal Justice System examines how Latina “victims” of interpersonal violence view their interactions with police officers and other systems actors, how Latina girls and women navigate the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and how undocumented Latina women experience the U.S. “crimmigration” system. The book concludes with suggestions for effective community-based programming.