The Abuse to Prison Pipeline

Feminism NOW

Episode Description: The theme of this season is “women uplifting women.” Domestic violence is an issue that affects many women in this country, but the ongoing criminalization of survivors is often overlooked in our conversations about ending gender-based violence. For our last episode of the season, NOW National President Christian F. Nunes sits down with Becki T. Kondkar, Director of the Tulane Law School Domestic Violence Clinic and Founding Director of the Tulane Law School Women’s Prison Project to discuss how some women end up unjustly incarcerated, and what other women can do about it.

Links:

Women’s Prison Project

Report from the Sentencing Project on women serving life without parole and death sentences in the US

Guest: Becki Kondkar is Director of the Tulane Law School Domestic Violence Clinic and founding Director of the Law School’s Women’s Prison Project (WPP). Kondkar has represented hundreds of survivors of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, stalking, trafficking, and child sex abuse in civil and criminal courts, has trained generations of law students through Tulane’s clinical programs, and has educated attorneys, judges, mental health professionals, and advocates nationwide on legal system responses to gender-based violence. Since its founding in 2019, the WPP has been recognized for its groundbreaking work by the Conference on Crimes Against Women, the American College of Trial Lawyers, the Louisiana Association of Defense Lawyers, and the American Association of Law Schools. The program's mission is to end the criminalization of survival for women who experience gender-based violence and to free those unjustly incarcerated for killing an abusive partner or for participation in crimes under duress or coercion. Working alongside the law students they train, the WPP team has won freedom for 15 women who had served a combined total of 279 years in Louisiana's prisons.

Take Action NOW: This is our final episode of season 3, which means it’s time to plan for season 4 of Feminism NOW! Reach out to us at [e-mail] to let us know what issues you’d like to hear covered on the show.

Listen to new episodes of Feminism NOW released every other Wednesday. To find out more about the National Organization for Women, visit our website.

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