Beth Richie

Beth E. Richie is Head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice and Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The emphasis of her scholarly and activist work has been on the ways that race/ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual-assault survivors. Dr. Richie is the author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation (NYU Press, 2012), which chronicles the evolution of the contemporary anti-violence movement during the time of mass incarceration in the United States, and numerous articles concerning Black feminism and gender violence, race and criminal-justice policy, and the social dynamics around issues of sexuality, prison abolition, and grassroots organizations in African American communities. Dr. Richie is a board member of the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African Community, the National Network for Women in Prison, and A Call To Men; and a founding member of INCITE!: Women of Color Against Violence.