Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism

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Charis and GA Coalition Against Domestic Violence Presents: Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism, a panel discussion featuring Leigh Goodmark (author), Karimah Dillard, Micah Herskind, and jenani “jen” srijeyanthan. Imperfect Victims is a profound, compelling argument for abolition feminism—to protect criminalized survivors of gender-based violence, we must dismantle the carceral system. The Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence (GCADV) is the leading voice to end domestic violence in Georgia, representing over 50 domestic violence organizations and programs across the state.

Since the 1970s, anti-violence advocates have worked to make the legal system more responsive to gender-based violence. But greater state intervention in cases of intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and trafficking has led to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of victims, particularly women of color and trans and gender-nonconforming people. Imperfect Victims argues that only dismantling the system will bring that punishment to an end. 
 
Amplifying the voices of survivors, including her own clients, abolitionist law professor Leigh Goodmark deftly guides readers on a step-by-step journey through the criminalization of survival. Abolition feminism reveals the possibility of a just world beyond the carceral state, which is fundamentally unable to respond to, let alone remedy, harm. As Imperfect Victims shows, abolition feminism is the only politics and practice that can undo the indescribable damage inflicted on survivors by the very system purporting to protect them.

Leigh Goodmark (she/hers) is the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Frances King Carey School of Law. Professor Goodmark co-directs the Clinical Law Program, teaches Family Law, Gender and the Law, and Gender Violence and the Law, and directs the Gender Violence Clinic. Professor Goodmark’s scholarship focuses on intimate partner violence. She is the author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (University of California Press 2023); Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence (University of California Press 2018) and A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System (New York University 2012), which was named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of 2012. She is the co-editor of Comparative Perspectives on Gender Violence: Lessons from Efforts Worldwide (Oxford 2015). Professor Goodmark’s work on intimate partner violence has also appeared in numerous journals, law reviews, and publications, including Violence Against Women, the New York Times, the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the Harvard Journal on Gender and the Law, and the Yale Journal on Law and Feminism. From 2003 to 2014, Professor Goodmark was on the faculty at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she served as Director of Clinical Education and Co-director of the Center on Applied Feminism. From 2000 to 2003, Professor Goodmark was the Director of the Children and Domestic Violence Project at the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law. Before joining the Center on Children and the Law, Professor Goodmark represented clients in the District of Columbia in custody, visitation, child support, restraining order, and other civil matters. Professor Goodmark is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law School.

Karimah Dillard, LMSW, RDT/BCT is The Director of Policy and Co-Director of the Justice for Incarcerated Survivors project with the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence (GCADV). Karimah has been a part of the domestic violence movement since 2017 first as an Advocate and then as Manager of Community Partnerships for a local domestic violence agency. In her current role with GCADV, Karimah’s primary focus is to collaborate with coalition members, lawmakers and key stakeholders in advocating for local and federal policies that uphold and protect the interests and rights of survivors across the state of Georgia. Karimah provides leadership and oversight in GCADV’s Justice for Incarcerated Survivors (JFIS) project where she advocates on behalf of incarcerated survivors with a history of domestic violence.

Micah Herskind is a policy advocate at the Southern Center for Human Rights, an organizer with Georgia Freedom Letters, and a co-creator of the #8ToAbolition political education project. Micah writes about the prison industrial complex (PIC) and movements to abolish it, and maintains an updated resource guide on PIC abolition.

jenani “jen” srijeyanthan (they/she/them) is an [eelam tamil / queer / disabled] anti-violence advocate residing on Mvskoke land (Atlanta, GA), originally by ways of Lenape territory (South Brunswick, NJ). they have a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience & Behavioral Biology from Emory University. Over the course of their organizing journey, jenani has focused on abolition feminism, transformative justice-centered advocacy, and technical assistance on behalf of survivors in Georgia, namely young survivors and survivors within under-resourced communities. Their current work to end gender-based violence is housed within two entities: Just Beginnings Collaborative and the devi co-op. jenani is the co-founder and pre-trial survivor defense fellow at the devi co-op (TDC), a QTBPOC intergenerational cooperative seeking to disrupt and create alternatives to carceral landscapes as, with, and for Georgia survivors of gender-based violence. Their organizing interests include: survivor defense, transformative justice, education, inside/outside survivor community building, and dreaming of a world where love reigns supreme. jenani centers young survivors and survivors who are currently/formerly incarcerated and/or system-involved, namely from queer and trans communities.