"For Dear Life" (U. Michigan Press, 2019) chronicles feminist and artist Carol Jacobsen’s deep commitment to the causes of justice and human rights. Jacobsen’s tireless work with and for women prisoners is charted in this rich assemblage of images and texts that reveal the collective strategies she and the prisoners have employed to receive justice. The book gives evidence that women’s lawbreaking is often an effort to survive gender-based violence. The faces, letters, and testimonies of dozens of incarcerated women with whom Jacobsen has worked present a visceral yet politicized chorus of voices against the criminal-legal systems that fail us all. Their voices are joined by those of leading feminist scholars in essays that illuminate the arduous methods of dissent that Jacobsen and the others have employed to win freedom for more than a dozen women sentenced to life imprisonment, and to free many more from torturous prison conditions.

This conversation will focus a critical lens on an American criminal-legal regime that imparts racist, gendered, and classist modes of punishment to women lawbreakers.

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