For Black women and girls, disability (or the appearance of it) is more likely to be weaponized to facilitate and justify arrest, confinement, and even death.

In honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we’ve compiled a list of books by Black women whose work deepens our understanding of how Black women and girls are criminalized—and how liberation becomes possible when justice is healing-centered, gender-responsive, culturally affirming, trauma-informed, and rooted in community-led practices.

Over the past 30 years, the women's prison population in the United States has exploded, with much of the growth occurring among Black women. The Prison Policy Initiative estimates that 1.9 million women are released from prisons and jails each year—that means about 1 in 8 people released from prisons and more than 1 in 6 people released from jails are women. However, the availability of gender-responsive reentry services does not meet the need, especially for Black women, wh

Black women and girls are overwhelmingly affected by gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence, domestic violence, and sexual assault. Black survivors are all too often criminalized for their survival strategies and for their response to trauma and abuse. This abuse-to-prison pipeline, referring to the pathways that lead from gender-based violence to criminalization, further harms Black women and girl survivors of abuse. One in five Black women have experien