Survivor Criminology

Survivor Criminology explores how one’s status as a survivor has informed their journey and commitment to research, teaching, and activism. It provides a both a greater understanding to issues of victimization and gives a voice to those experiences as their foundation for criminological research, advocacy, and policy development.

Survivor Criminology: A Radical Act of Hope is a trauma-informed approach to the study of crime and justice that stems from the lived experiences of crime survivors. The chapters within this volume explore our authors’ who have each had close personal encounters with violence and death, as well as institutionalized oppressions based on racism, heterosexism, sexism, and poverty. As scholars, professors, practitioners, and students in the field, these lived experiences with crime and criminal justice have shaped their research, teaching, and advocacy work. Their voices represent experiences that are intersectional, mult-igenerational, global, trauma-informed and resiliency focused. They are deliberately and decidedly anti-racist, and their experiences acknowledge the harm that has resulted from institutionalized and structural trauma. Most importantly, their stories are grounded in their lived experiences.

This volume offers survivor criminology as a radical act of hope. Our hope comes from the belief that a trauma-centered approach to crime, justice, and healing provides the opportunity for criminology to expand its theoretical and methodological roots. We see this work as transformative for the discipline - for students, scholars, members of the community, and policy-makers.

Foreword by Elizabeth A. Stanko

Introduction: A Call for Survivor Criminology by Kimberly J. Cook, Reneè D. Lamphere, Jason M. Williams, Stacy L. Mallicoat, and Alissa R. Ackerman

Chapter 1: Balancing the Dual Roles of Sex Crimes Researcher and Rape Survivor: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Survivor Scholars by Alexa D. Sardina and Alissa R. Ackerman

Chapter 2: No More Whispers in Secret: My Journey to Navigating Trauma in Academia by Reneè D. Lamphere

Chapter 3: I Am Not Supposed to be Here: Surviving Poverty and Anti-Blackness in Criminology and Academia by Jason M. Williams

Chapter 4: From Battered Woman to Professor: A Personal Reflection by Kimberly J. Cook

Chapter 5: From East New York to the Ivy Tower: How Structural Violence and Gang Membership Made Me a Critical Scholar by Jennifer Ortiz

Chapter 6: Navigating Survival: Contemplating Adversity and Resilience in Academia by Monishia Miller

Chapter 7: Surviving Death by Incarceration: Life Without Parole (LWOP) by Steven Green

Chapter 8: Growing as an Intersectional Scholar Means Rejecting Misogynoir: Unlearning as an Act of Survival by Toniqua C. Mikell

Chapter 9: When Did Black Lives Ever Matter by Babette J. Boyd

Chapter 10: Survivor Methodology for Healing and Transformation: A Love Letter to Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse by Lauren J. Silver

Chapter 11: Survivor Criminology as a Scholar/Activist in the #MeToo Movement and #MeToo Activism by Meredith G. F. Worthen

Chapter 12: Intersectional Biases in the Rural Courtroom by Stacy Parks Miller

Chapter 13: From Trauma to Healing: Aboriginal-Led Solutions for First-Nations Justice Involved Communities in Australia by Carly Stanley and Keenan Mundine

Conclusion: Survivor Criminology: Looking Forward by Kimberly J. Cook, Reneè D. Lamphere, Jason M. Williams, Stacy L. Mallicoat, and Alissa R. Ackerman