Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality - Softcover

Ross, Luana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292770847 ISBN 13: 9780292770843

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 1998

Synopsis

Luana Ross writes, "Native Americans disappear into Euro-American institutions of confinement at alarming rates. People from my reservation appeared to simply vanish and magically return. [As a child] I did not realize what a 'real' prison was and did not give it any thought. I imagined this as normal; that all families had relatives who went away and then returned."

In this pathfinding study, Ross draws upon the life histories of imprisoned Native American women to demonstrate how race/ethnicity, gender, and class contribute to the criminalizing of various behaviors and subsequent incarceration rates. Drawing on the Native women's own words, she reveals the violence in their lives prior to incarceration, their respective responses to it, and how those responses affect their eventual criminalization and imprisonment. Comparisons with the experiences of white women in the same prison underline the significant role of race in determining women's experiences within the criminal justice system.

About this title

Review:

"Professor Ross, through painstaking phenomenological analysis, has unmasked some of the ways in which (race, class, and gender) prejudices, and their internalization by individuals targeted by them, exert enormous influence on the processes and outcomes of the American criminal justice system... This book will be of tremendous import to a broad, interdisciplinary audience." Franke Wilmer, Associate Professor of Political Science, Montana State University

From the Back Cover:

In this pathfinding study, Ross draws upon the life histories of imprisoned Native American women to demonstrate how race/ethnicity, gender, and class contribute to the criminalizing of various behaviors and subsequent incarceration rates. Drawing on the Native women's own words, she reveals the violence in their lives prior to incarceration, their respective responses to it, and how those responses affect their eventual criminalization and imprisonment. Comparisons with the experiences of white women in the same prison underline the significant role of race in determining women's experiences within the criminal justice system.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0292770847
• ISBN 13: 9780292770843
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 326