This book provides the first comprehensive and detailed analysis of the Infanticide Act and its impact in England and Wales and around the world. It is 100 years since an Infanticide Act was first passed in England and Wales. The statute, re-enacted in 1938, allows for leniency to be given to women who kill their infants within the first year of life. This legislation is unique and controversial: it creates a specific offence and defence that is available only to women who kill their biological infants. Men and other carers are not able to avail of the special mitigation provided by the Act, nor are women who kill older children. The collection brings together leading experts in the field to offer important insights into the history of the law, how it works today, the impact and legacy of the statute and potential futures of infanticide laws around the world. Contributors consider the Act in practice in England and Wales, the ways it has been portrayed in the British media and justifications for and criticisms of the provision of special treatment for women who kill their infants within a year of birth. It also looks at the criminal justice responses to infanticide in other jurisdictions, such as Australia, Ireland, Sweden and the United States of America.

Bringing together academics and professionals, this edited collection considers key issues in current criminal justice policy and practice related specifically to women to answer the important question: are women being failed by the criminal justice system? In a landscape where women's involvement in the criminal justice system still tends to be ignored or lost in discussions about men, contributors place special emphasis on women as both victims and offenders. The chapters cover a wide range of topics relating to women and crime, including: violent and sexual victimisation, violent offending, sentencing and punishment, and rape myths. Since the peak of feminist criminal justice scholarship in the 1990s, the place of women in the criminal justice system has arguably slipped down the agenda and the authors of this collection draw on original research to make the compelling case for a swift remedy to this. Drawing on recent academic studies and professional experience to set an agenda for future research - as well as legal and policy reform - this book injects new life into the dialogue surrounding women and the criminal justice system. Innovative and timely, this collection of essays holds broad appeal to academics and practitioners, as well as students of criminology, criminal justice and law, and all those with an interest in feminism, justice, and inequality.

The call came at 6 A.M. Karen Brennan's twenty-five-year-old daughter, Rachel, had been in a motorcycle accident. She was in a coma. Her CAT scan, the neurosurgeon said, was very, very ugly. Instantly, Karen Brennan's life of comfortable dailiness becomes "passionate necessary-ness." Cautioned that her daughter will not be the "same person," Brennan waits and hopes through weeks of intensive care, months of coma, and Rachel's determined efforts to walk again. The joy of Rachel's first words is followed by the discovery that she has a severe short-term memory deficit. Rachel cannot remember or fashion a simple narrative. A professor with a special interest in memory, Brennan takes up the challenge of helping Rachel rebuild herself. Jump-starting her daughter's memory by constantly retelling Rachel's own story, Brennan also fosters the creativity and humor that have always characterized her daughter. Their collaborative effort, bound by love, is a dynamic memoir of recovery and reinvention. Brennan says, "Why am I writing this story? I ask myself. I am writing to discover the situation in which my daughter and I find ourselves. I am writing as a way of grieving, because writing is the only way I know how to work out my loss. And I think if I can construct the story of Rachel's recovery, it might deliver me once and for all to hopefulness." "Being with Rachel is for readers who want to be reminded of why books matter. Karen Brennan's memoir advocates, illustrates, demonstrates the superhuman power of family, its ability to triumph in the face of worst-case scenarios, institutional aloofness, bad luck, and the evil influence of conventional wisdom. The family that emerges here is one built on a great deal of passionate, difficult love. This is a tough and inspiring and heartbreaking book."--Antonya Nelson "Spare, understated, emotionally honest and yet unsentimental, this beautifully crafted memoir succeeds on two levels: both as an extraordinarily moving personal document and as a vital investigation into the nature of memory and narrative."--Andrea Barrett