Can't Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility

Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can’t Catch a Break documents the day-to-day lives of forty women as they struggle to survive sexual abuse, violent communities, ineffective social and therapeutic programs, discriminatory local and federal policies, criminalization, incarceration, and a broad cultural consensus that views suffering as a consequence of personal flaws and bad choices. Combining hard-hitting policy analysis with an intimate account of how marginalized women navigate an unforgiving world, Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk shine new light on the deep and complex connections between suffering and social inequality.

• Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women's Prisons (Voice of Witness)
• Complicated Lives: Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice (Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies)
• You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking like a Sociologist (Fifth Edition)
• Compelled to Crime
• Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
• Crazy in America
• Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
• Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action
• Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion