Women in Trouble

Connecting Women’s Law Violation to their Histories of Abuse

Elizabeth Comack

This book addresses one of the more alarming findings to emerge about women in prison: the fact that 80 percent report histories of physical and sexual abuse.

“Elizabeth allows the women in this book to speak their own truth. It’s a graphic, shocking, depressing and absolutely necessary account of the connections between histories of abuse and trouble with the law.” - Karen Toole-Mitchell, Winnipeg Free Press

About the Author

Elizabeth Comack is Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Manitoba. She received her Ph.D in sociology from the University of Alberta, her M.A. from Queens University and B.A.(Honours) from the University of Winnipeg.

Elizabeth’s research interests fall within two main areas: the sociology of law and feminist criminology. Over the past three decades she has written and conducted research on a variety of topics: the origins of Canadian drug laws; the capital punishment debate; the legal recognition of the ‘Battered Woman Syndrome’;  the abuse histories of women in prison; violence, inequality, and the law; safety and security issues in Winnipeg’s inner-city communities; and masculinity, violence, and prisoning.  Her current research projects stem from her involvement in a SSHRC/CURA project, under the auspices of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba (CCPA-MB), entitled “Transforming Aboriginal and Inner-City Communities.”  In one of these projects, now underway, she and Nahanni Fontaine of the Southern Chiefs’ Organization (SCO) are interviewing Aboriginal peoples about their experiences with the police.

Elizabeth’s teaching regularly includes third-year courses in the department’s Criminology Program (Sociology of Law, and Women, Crime and Social Justice) as well as graduate seminars in the Sociology of Law and Feminist Criminology. She has also taught Feminism and Sociological Theory, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as the Honours Thesis Seminar.