“A Tilt Between Justice and Total Depravity”: The Criminalization of Black Women and the Expansion of Carceral Space in Detroit

Abstract

This article examines the ways Black women and girls in Detroit, Michigan, were criminalized and punished as they encountered criminal courts, indeterminate sentences, women’s reformatories, and police brutality from the 1870s to the early 1900s. Detroit was uniquely situated as a border city and a major destination in the Great Migration in the early twentieth century. Black women and girls fled vigilante violence, poverty, and segregation. Women sought new opportunities in the urban North. This article argues that criminal justice institutions laid the foundation for the criminalization of Black women and girls by the early twentieth century. Drawing on archival records, annual prison reports, and historical newspapers, the article traces the ways Black women were categorized and punished in criminal courts, women’s prisons, and encounters with police. The article brings together histories of the reformatory movement, urbanization, industrialization, and segregation to examine how the treatment of Black women and girls in Detroit put in place practices that expanded the carceral reach of the state and excluded people from freedom and opportunity along racialized and gendered boundaries.