Criminalisation of Poverty: A Focus on Women
Hosted by Dr Ally Walsh, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds.
This online seminar was aimed at practitioners and researchers interested in women and the criminal justice system.
The event drew on perspectives from criminology, sociology, and performance in order to explore the relationship between the feminisation of poverty and gendered experiences of punishment within the criminal justice system. We brought together scholars, practitioners, and activists to understand and illuminate the specific experiences of women in relation to increasingly violent austerity policies and penal systems. COVID-19 and lockdown has exacerbated these issues.
We aimed to collectively consider strategies for organising and resisting economic disenfranchisement, and how people in poverty are persistently criminalised by state systems. We’ll consider how stigma is furthered in cultural representations.
This was a mixture of presentations and interactive discussions.
Presentations
Dr Sarah Bartley, University of Reading
Dr Emma Wincup, Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Screening This is Poverty
Breakout rooms and facilitated discussion
Leeds, local context and significant issues
Themes related to…
- Emerging issues in the criminalisation of poverty
- Shame/ stigma and cultural representations
- Your organisation/ perspectives
- Intersections: Housing/ Debt/ In-work poverty/ Skills gap & finding employment
Creative responses by Dr Ella Holdsworth (research associate, School of Law) and Chiedza Chinhanu, University of Leeds Post Graduate Researcher (About practice in Zimbabwe, women & poverty)