Editing Matrix of domination (section)

=== In female criminality ===
In April Bernard's article, "The Intersectional Alternative: Explaining Female Criminality", Bernard applies Patricia Hill Collins’ work to the study of feminist criminology, as a means of explaining the cumulative effects of identity in a system of oppression on women's decisions to commit a crime.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal|last=Bernard|first=April|date=2013|title=The Intersectional Alternative: Explaining Female Criminality|journal=Feminist Criminology|volume=8|pages=3–19|doi=10.1177/1557085112445304|s2cid=146950388}}</ref> Bernard employs an intersectional approach to dissect the complexities that act as determinant factors in a woman's decision to partake in criminal activities, and more specifically, the limiting pressures of a patriarchal society.<ref name=":4" /> In particular, this article is framed in response to Robert Merton's claims about deviance as a response to a lack of adequate resources to achieve cultural goals, as Bernard employs an intersectional paradigm model that explores female criminality as an expression of constraint and circumscription, rather than a "strained reality".<ref name=":4" /> With this alternative framework, Bernard suggests that societal goals are not unanimous, and are instead shaped by individuals’ experiences in economic, political, and social spaces; for marginalized women, access to the means through which they build success are impacted by micro- and macro-level norms and histories that have created indicators of class (e.g. racial, economic, political, sexual) and subjugated them to limited networks.<ref name=":4" /> Thus, identity makes women with marginalized identities more vulnerable in the legal system, subjugates to oppressive states within multiple institutions, and creating a need for policies that move toward creating an equitable reality for them.<ref name=":4" />

Nancy A. Heitzeg's article, "'Whiteness', criminality, and double standards of deviance/social control" focuses on the construct of white racial framing and the impact that has on constructing Blackness with criminality.<ref name="HeitzeigWhiteness">{{Cite journal|last=Heitzeg|first=Nancy A.|date=2015-04-03|title='Whiteness,' criminality, and the double standards of deviance/social control|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10282580.2015.1025630|journal=Contemporary Justice Review|volume=18|issue=2|pages=197–214|doi=10.1080/10282580.2015.1025630|s2cid=144786823|issn=1028-2580|url-access=subscription}}</ref> In doing so Heitzeg speaks on the methods of social control, placed on those who are deviant from the norm of society. Mechanisms of social control find themselves helping to categorize those who are not cis-gendered and white as the "Other". Heitzeg, using Patricia Hill Collin's "matrix of domination" explores how shapes access to social control as well as opportunity.<ref name="HeitzeigWhiteness" /> Deviating from the social control base that finds itself at the intersections of race, gender, and class among other differences helps to solidify who is categorized as the "Other".

Markers associated with race, class, gender, etc., argues Heitzeg allows for stereotypes that allows for mitigation of a "redeemable" white middle class and criminalization for poor Black people and other people of color. White racial framing creates a space for constructing storylines of white deviance, simultaneously creating storylines of Black criminality.<ref name="HeitzeigWhiteness"/> This extends itself to the "medicalization" of whiteness, allowing for racial framing around whiteness to allow for associations of purity and redeem-ability. The opposite is imposed upon Black people. The identifiers associated with whiteness and Blackness allow for a framework in which subjects Blackness to something that is accepted as criminal.

In the context of criminality, the Matrix of Domination, may best present itself in the statistics:

Currently the number of women imprisoned in the United States is more than one million, making them the fastest growing population in the prison industrial complex.<ref name=":03">{{Cite web|title=Facts about the Over-Incarceration of Women in the United States|url=https://www.aclu.org/other/facts-about-over-incarceration-women-united-states|access-date=2020-11-10|website=American Civil Liberties Union|language=en}}</ref> The number of women in prison has massively increased from statistics found in the 1980s, more than eight times as many women have been reported to be either in prison, or are at the control of the criminal justice system.<ref name=":03" />

Within these numbers, Black and brown women are an overrepresented population. Black women represented roughly thirty percent of the prison population while only representing thirteen percent of the female population in the United States.<ref name=":03" /> In addition, Hispanic women currently make up roughly sixteen percent of the prison population, while only making up eleven percent of the female population in the United States.<ref name=":03" />

The facts surrounding the cases for Black and brown women who are incarcerated show a pattern of these women being from urban areas, with an emphasis on their alleged crimes being ones of involvement or association, as opposed to being the sole perpetrator.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Number of Women in Jails and Prisons Soars {{!}} University of Chicago - SSA|url=https://www.ssa.uchicago.edu/ssa_magazine/number-women-jails-and-prisons-soars|access-date=2020-11-10|website=www.ssa.uchicago.edu}}</ref> Scholars have attributed these numbers to the over-policing of these neighborhoods in which house an almost exclusively minority population.  Other attributes come from the variations in arrest and sentencing policies and practices, prison expansions, especially with for profit prisons being on the rise.