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New Report about Gender and Death by Incarceration

Last week, the Abolitionist Law Center dropped a new report called From Victim to Victor: An Inquiry into Incarceration, Gender and Resistance in PA. This was the first-ever report to examine the gendered experience of Death by Incarceration in Pennsylvania from the direct perspectives of those living it.

Abolitionist writer, Victoria Law covered the unveiling of this mammoth 107 page report in Truthout. Her article starts like this:

When she was 20 years old, Sheená King was sentenced to life without parole. Two years earlier, King’s boyfriend had coerced her into fatally shooting another woman, threatening to kill her and her family if she refused. She was convicted of murder, which, in Pennsylvania, mandates life without parole.

It’s a sentence that King, now age 50, and other advocates call “death by incarceration.”

“Freedom is ensured when my ashes are shipped to my daughter in a cardboard box,” she explained in a newly released report on women and trans people serving similar sentences.

Sheená King