Queer (In)justice

October 18, 2010
The U.S. justice system is severely flawed—and its treatment of queer people is representative of its brokenness, argue the authors of the most recent entry in the Queer Action/Queer Ideas series. In a call to action to readers to aid in dismantling the violence endemic to policing and punishment systems, the authors present a history of the criminalization of homosexuality and gender nonconformity, from 1513, when Balboa condemning gay indigenous people to be ripped apart by his hunting dogs, to the turn-of-the-millennium Michigan state troopers' decade-long "bag a fag" operation targeting truck stops. Discussions include the creation of queer criminal archetypes (e.g., Leopold and Loeb), representation of queer individuals as criminals in media (the murderous transsexuals Norman Bates and Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb), the treatment of queers in criminal courts, prisons as queer spaces, the inadequacy of legal prosecution of violence against LGBT people, and the groups currently working to address all of these issues. While the authors' knowledge of their subject is encyclopedic and their mission and advocacy admirable, the heavily academic tone and organization might prevent this book from finding a wider readership.

January 4, 2010
Metzl, a psychiatrist and Univ. of Michigan professor, uses the largely unknown story of Michigan's Ionia Mental Hospital to track the evolving definition of schizophrenia from the 1920s to the '70s, from an illness of "pastoral, feminine neurosis into one of urban, male psychosis" correlated with aggression. Metzl puts the imperfect science of diagnosis in historical context with admirable lucidity, moving into the present to examine how a tangle of medical errors and systemic racism that labels "threats to authority as mental illness" influences the diagnosis of black men with schizophrenia. He offers a laudably complex look at a complex and still poorly understood condition, expanding his discussion to include the impact of deinstitutionalization and the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II) in the 1960s. The result is a sophisticated analysis of the mechanisms of racism in the mental health system and, by extension, the criminal justice system.

February 15, 2011

"This book is an effort to bring queer experiences of the criminal legal system to the center--of LGBT discourse and of broader conversations around crime and punishment." Chapters tackle the history of homosexuality and law and punishment in America, criminal archetypes and stereotypes of LGBT persons, policing of social order, treatment of LGBT persons by the criminal justice system, and criminal legal responses to violence against them. In an interesting final chapter, Mogul and Andrea J. Ritchie, attorneys specializing in civil rights and police misconduct, respectively, and organizer and activist Kay Whitlock discuss how LGBT rights organizations, groups in communities, prisoner and ex-prisoner groups, and others might push an LGBT rights agenda ahead. Other similar recent books, such as Carlos Ball's From the Closet to the Courtroom, focus more on legal rights. VERDICT Illuminating reading for criminal justice scholars and educated readers with an interest in gay rights. For public and academic libraries.--Mary Jane Brustman, Univ. at Albany Libs., NY

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