Vera Lopez – författare

Winner of the 2019 Intersectional Book Award from the American Society of Criminology's Division on Women & Crime​Complicated Lives focuses on the lives of sixty-five drug-using girls in the juvenile justice system (living in group homes, a residential treatment center, and a youth correctional facility) who grew up in families characterized by parental drug use, violence, and child maltreatment. Vera Lopez situates girls’ relationships with parents who fail to live up to idealized parenting norms and examines how these relationships change over time, and ultimately contribute to the girls’ future drug use and involvement in the justice system.    While Lopez’s subjects express concerns and doubt in their chances for success, Lopez provides an optimistic prescription for reform and improvement of the lives of these young women and presents a number of suggestions ranging from enhanced cultural competency training for all juvenile justice professionals to developing stronger collaborations between youth and adult serving systems and agencies.

This anthology provides exciting, innovative research focused on the construction of adolescent girls’ sexuality in the media. The volume includes a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives from the humanities and the social sciences, addressing how girls and others respond to, work with, and even resist prevailing media representations of girls’ sexualities and how they use contemporary media as a form of sexual expression.The authors consider a wide array of sexual attitudes, behaviors, and expressions not commonly seen in the sexualities literature, including the voices of «other» girls whose voices are often ignored, particularly racial/ethnic minority and indigenous girls, sexual minorities, and girls from non-U.S. settings. The use of ethnographic data, in conjunction with media analysis techniques, provides a unique approach to the media studies genre, which tends to highlight an analysis of media content, as opposed to the ways in which media is used in everyday life.

This anthology provides exciting, innovative research focused on the construction of adolescent girls’ sexuality in the media. The volume includes a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives from the humanities and the social sciences, addressing how girls and others respond to, work with, and even resist prevailing media representations of girls’ sexualities and how they use contemporary media as a form of sexual expression.The authors consider a wide array of sexual attitudes, behaviors, and expressions not commonly seen in the sexualities literature, including the voices of «other» girls whose voices are often ignored, particularly racial/ethnic minority and indigenous girls, sexual minorities, and girls from non-U.S. settings. The use of ethnographic data, in conjunction with media analysis techniques, provides a unique approach to the media studies genre, which tends to highlight an analysis of media content, as opposed to the ways in which media is used in everyday life.

How Latina girls and women become entangled in the criminal justice systemDespite representing roughly 16 percent of incarcerated women, Latina women and girls are often rendered invisible in accounts of American crime and punishment. In Latinas in the Criminal Justice System, Vera Lopez and Lisa Pasko bring together a group of distinguished scholars to provide a more complete, nuanced picture of Latinas as victims, offenders, and targets of deportation. Featuring Cecilia Menjívar, Lisa M. Martinez, Alice Cepeda, and others, this volume examines the complex histories, backgrounds, and struggles of Latinas in the criminal justice system. Contributors show us how Latinas encounter a variety of justice systems, including juvenile detention, adult court and corrections, and immigration and customs enforcement. Topics include Latina victims of crime and their perceptions of police officers; the impact of the US "crimmigration" system on undocumented Latina women; and help-seeking among Latina victims of intimate partner violence. Additionally, key chapters highlight the emergence of legal reforms, community mobilization efforts, and gender-sensitive alternatives to incarceration designed to increase equitable outcomes. Lopez and Pasko broaden our understanding of how gender, ethnicity, and legal status uniquely shape the experiences of system-impacted Latina girls and women. Latinas in the Criminal Justice System is a timely and much-needed resource for academics, activists, and policymakers.