Review of Convicted Survivors by Elizabeth Leonard

Review of Convicted Survivors by Elizabeth Leonard

After reading the description of about half the books on the book review list, I found this one to be most intriguing. I've always wanted to learn more about the subject how women deal with battery in the home through a spouse or male partner. That is what this book does. It talks about women who have had to take the last step in escaping abusive relationships; killing the partner. I loved this book and found it very informative. It takes you into the lives of women who have had to resort to these measures and it goes through the process of the results of their actions, as well as correlations to the abuse and why these women had no other option than to do what they did. It's going to be very hard to fit everything from this book into a five page paper so I am going to give you a general summary and hit on the main points.

The first thing this book does is explains to us what types of abuse it is that leads women to take these measures. It says that there are many different labels on types of abuse within a family (or relationship) but no matter how many "neutral terms" you throw around, it is still true that the most common form of abuse, the abuse that happens more than any other form, is the abuse that women experience from their male partners. This is (in my opinion) the most important point in the entire book. It is the root of everything in the book as well as a root in much of what we learn in class.

The book tells us that the methods used today to give us our information on women who commit homicide towards their spouses or partners. When these types of crimes are reported the details as to why the woman committed homicide are simply left out. What this does is l...

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...as a single parent and worked as a corrections officer. I've always loved to go to work with her and just observe the people and it always interested me as to why people where in there and what led them to end up in jail. I used to love to sit in court and hear what people were charged with. I always wanted more details as to why they were there and this book covers greatly the details of this specific type of case: battery leading to homicide.

A lot of the details in this book we have covered in class. This book goes along perfectly with our books on women in prison. They all fit in together and cover the gaps that each misses, and cover more specific details. This book contributes greatly to the criminogenic family because that is what the book is all about.

Leonard, Elizabeth (2002). Convicted Survivors. Albany, New York: State

University of New York Press.