Three female petitioners sued a state-managed prison facility after prison officials required them to verify that they were menstruating before bringing feminine hygiene products into a male prison when visiting inmates. One of the petitioners’ children was also forced to watch the mother being searched because prison rules require children be supervised at all times.
On May 14th, The Avon Global Center and the University of Chicago Law School co-hosted a meeting of experts on the causes, conditions and consequences of women’s imprisonment globally. About 35 experts from the U.S., U.K., Russia, and Argentina participated in the meeting, including policy advocates, impact litigators, scholars, service providers, and senior department of corrections officials.
This paper explores some of the ways in which violence against women relates to the imprisonment of women. It focuses on the role of gender-based violence as a pathway to and consequence of women’s incarceration, as these connections have generally received less attention than violence against women as a prison condition. The paper also considers how these pathways and consequences implicate states’ international law responsibility to eliminate violence against women and offer suggestions for how states might more effectively realize that obligation.
Report by the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and International Human Rights Clinic, University of Chicago Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, and the Public Defender's Office in Argentina finding that women and their families are disproportionately affected by the harsh penalties imposed for low-level drug offences in Argentina.
