Pink Crime

Praise for Pink Crime:
“A startling revelation of misogyny embedded deeply in the U.S. legal system.”—Publishers Weekly

“In Pink Crime, Valena Beety names something we’ve been watching in horror but have rarely been able to articulate. She writes with the precision of a litigator and the passion of someone who knows how much is at stake. Pink Crime is a vital service, a warning, and a blueprint for fighting back.”—Irin Carmon, author of Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America and Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“In her searing and memorable new book, Valena Beety explores a trap that can ensnare the innocent—prosecutions based on suspicions rooted not primarily in what they’ve done, but in who they are. Beety shows how pregnant and queer people are vulnerable to charges others would not face, especially when poverty plays a role. And she also offers hope by charging a path to resistance.”—Emily Bazelon, author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration

“As a wrongfully convicted queer woman I am not surprised to read about these other unjust cases against women. Why do gender norms, moral panics, purity, and motherhood enter into the courts of law? What happened to seeking truth and justice? Will women ever have their own autonomy?”—Anna Vasquez, exoneree, president of the Innocence Network, and Outreach and Education Director of the Innocence Project of Texas

“Pink Crime weaves together the threads of prosecutorial misconduct and the use of junk science with the fall of Roe v. Wade and creeping threats to data privacy not only to educate but to activate all of us to stop the ongoing criminalization of our bodies and identities.”—Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project

“A critical interrogation of the ways in which marginalized, feminized identities—woman; mother; queer; etc.—are weaponized to criminalize innocent people, often in cases where no crime has been committed at all. Beety’s analysis is clear, concise, and compelling. By focusing on identity broadly, she brings together cases that are rarely discussed in the same breath, such as pregnant women accused of murdering a fetus and lesbians accused of gang rape. A necessary book for anyone interested in abolition, the carceral state, feminism, and queer politics.”—Hugh Ryan, author of The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“Be prepared to get angry. Pink Crime details the outrageous and staggering number of ways that, even in the twenty-first century, criminalization continues to punish women and queer people who make decisions about their own bodies.”—Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

“Mothers convicted of harming their children based on junk science. Parents criminalized for seeking gender-affirming care for their trans kids. Pregnant people imprisoned for taking the drugs prescribed to them during their pregnancies. If you can’t imagine a world in which this happens, Valena Beety’s Pink Crime will upend the way that you see the criminal legal system—and give you the tools you need to change that system in your own community.”—Leigh Goodmark, author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism

“Drawing on years of experience as a defense lawyer, Valena Beety shows how the criminal law shapes and impacts the lives of pregnant people, parenthood, and queer identity. Her compassionate and clear perspective provides a guide to anyone who wants to better understand how individuals are ensnared in a system that harms not only those directly impacted but all of us.”—Aziza Ahmed, author of Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS

“Incisive and urgently necessary, Pink Crime names and exposes the systemic prosecution of women and queer people for who they are rather than what they’ve done. This important book gives language to a hidden architecture of punishment and offers a road map toward accountability, solidarity, and change.”—Rachel Rebouche, author of Accessing Abortion: Global and Comparative Perspectives

“This is not your mother’s treatise on wrongful convictions. Through heart-breaking stories, Valena Beety examines how our nation’s historical and pervasive repression of reproduction rights and gender expression enables the criminal legal system’s long-standing bias against women, minorities, the weak and disabled, as well as those whose gender preferences fall outside the norm to target and dehumanize women. That’s Pink Crime. Read it and weep.”—Adele Bernhard, NY Law School, Innocence Project Founder

“Beety reveals how standards of gender and gender performance are deeply imbedded into the criminal justice system. Her clear analysis reveals how women and other marginalized genders are legally punished for variance, deviance, and existence.”—Koa Beck, author of White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind

“Valena Beety has written a book that will stun and captivate all kinds of readers. It is at the same time sweeping and in-depth. But Beety doesn’t just tell us gripping stories about women wronged by ‘the system’ against an impressively researched backdrop. She offers us hope and solutions with a firm hand and moral clarity that demands that we ask for better—from society, for each other, and for ourselves.”—Abbie Goldberg, author of LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parent

“A book that focuses on the vulnerabilities of women caught in the justice system, and that gives an insightful look at the complexities of women’s wrongful convictions.”—Kristine Bunch, Indiana exoneree and founding board member of the Indiana Innocence Project

“As courts and legislatures aggressively expand the reach of criminal law into pregnancy, motherhood, and queer life, Pink Crime stands as a clarion call, and an urgent, incisive blueprint for defending bodily autonomy in this perilous legal era.”—Jessica Henry, author of Smoke but No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes That Never Happened

“The polar opposite of true crime is not crime fiction, but rather convictions for crimes that never occurred at all. Valena Beety’s compelling must-read book explores how often gender bias plays a role in these cases, and how new Supreme Court rulings and state laws threaten a new wave of no-crime wrongful convictions.”—Brandon Garrett, author of Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

“Valena Beety turns her brilliant scholarly eye to the unique injustices experienced by women and queer people in the criminal legal system. Full of wit and wisdom, Pink Crime is an absolute gem. After reading it, I guarantee you’ll be seeing red.”—Daniel S. Medwed, University Distinguished Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and author of Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison

“This is an urgent reckoning with a system that weaponizes its own tools against the people it was never designed to protect.”—Sarah Chu, director of Policy and Reform, Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law

“Pink Crime is a wake-up call. While educating readers about a problem most are likely not even aware of, Valena Beety also importantly lifts up the voices of queer people and women who have been victimized by the criminal justice system.”—Nathan Maxwell, senior legal counsel, Lambda Legal

“Valena Beety’s deep experience in criminal defense shines through. A convincing case for reconceptualizing a frightful array of prosecutions against women and LGBTQ people for the crime of living as themselves.”—Libby Adler, author of Gay Priori: A Queer Critical Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform