What is criminalized survivorship?

Oklahoma's women’s prisons are filled with survivors of violence. 

• According to the organization Survived and Punished, “the vast majority of people in women’s prisons, and many in men’s prisons, are survivors of domestic, sexual violence as children and adults. For many survivors, experiences of policing, criminalization, and incarceration are deeply intertwined with gender-based violence.” 

The statistics are striking. 

• 66% of women in prison were in a violent relationship within the year before their criminalization. (According to data collected by FWD.us for their report, Turning The Page.
• Nearly 60% of people in women's prisons nation-wide—and as many as 94% of some women's prison populations—have a history of physical or sexual abuse before incarceration (ACLU).
• According to Sanctuary for Families — a New York-based organization that was instrumental in advocating for the DVSJA legislation — 90% of incarcerated women are survivors of gender violence.
• There were over 45,000 domestic violence calls made in 2021 in Oklahoma County. Less than 1,000 of these led to arrest. 
• The average prison sentence for men who kill their female partners is 2 to 6 years. The average sentence for women who kill their male partners is 15 years, despite the fact that most women kill their abusive partners in self-defense (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence) 

Organizations with fact sheets, organizing resources, research, toolkits, and more:

• Survived and Punished
• S&P’s Defense Campaign Toolkit
• Women & Justice Project
• Sanctuary for Families
• Women’s Prison Association
• Women in Prison Project
• National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women
• Invisible No More
  

Suggested reading:

• No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder
• Decriminalizing Domestic Violence by Leigh Goodmark
• We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
• All Our Trials by Emily L. Thuma
• Down Girl by Kate Manne
• The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
• Burning Woman by Lucy H. Pearce
  

• No Choice But To Do It — The Appeal
• When Can a Woman Who Kills Her Abuser Claim Self-Defense? — The New Yorker
• When Abuse Victims Commit Crimes — The Atlantic 
• Stop Treating Domestic Violence Differently From Other Crimes — The New York Times
• U.N. Report: 50,000 Women A Year Are Killed By Intimate Partners, Family Members — NPR
• Nearly Half of All Murdered Women Are Killed By Romantic Partners — The Atlantic
• Divided States of Incarceration with Liz Plank
• Are Women Punished More Harshly for Killing an Intimate Partner? — The Guardian