Pink Crime
Fighting the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity
When your identity is the crime, innocence is no defense
“In Pink Crime, Valena Beety names something we’ve been watching in horror but have rarely been able to articulate. She makes vital connections between the ostensibly separate ways that marginalized people have been surveilled and policed for crimes that never occurred or simply don’t exist.” — Irin Carmon, author of Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America and Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work—and is sentenced to 126 years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but for who they are.
“In Pink Crime, Valena Beety names something we’ve been watching in horror but have rarely been able to articulate. She makes vital connections between the ostensibly separate ways that marginalized people have been surveilled and policed for crimes that never occurred or simply don’t exist.” — Irin Carmon, author of Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America and Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work—and is sentenced to 126 years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but for who they are.
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In the United States, nearly three-quarters of all wrongly convicted women were convicted of crimes that never occurred at all. Valena Beety, co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project and award-winning legal scholar cited by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reveals how ordinary tragedies—a child’s sudden death, a husband who dies in his sleep—are transformed by prosecutors into murders that never happened. These “no crime” convictions disproportionately target women and queer people, whose identities are recast as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched stereotypes.
Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Beety exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood, and queer identity itself.
At once deeply researched and urgently human, Pink Crime provides the historical context and legal framework readers need to understand one of the most dangerous—and least recognized—threats to civil liberties today. It is a wake-up call for advocates, lawyers, and anyone concerned with bodily autonomy, due process, and the future of justice.
Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Beety exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood, and queer identity itself.
At once deeply researched and urgently human, Pink Crime provides the historical context and legal framework readers need to understand one of the most dangerous—and least recognized—threats to civil liberties today. It is a wake-up call for advocates, lawyers, and anyone concerned with bodily autonomy, due process, and the future of justice.
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Praise
“Valena Beety’s Pink Crime is a critical interrogation of the ways in which marginalized, feminized identities—woman; mother; queer; etc.—are weaponized to criminalize innocent people, often in cases where no crime has been committed at all. Beety’s analysis is clear, concise, and compelling… A necessary book for anyone interested in abolition, the carceral state, feminism, and queer politics.”
— Hugh Ryan, author of The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
— Hugh Ryan, author of The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
“As a wrongfully convicted queer woman I am not surprised to read about these other unjust cases against women. Unfortunately, women who are not what society views as the norm can be criminalized to a harsher degree. Why do gender norms, moral panics, purity, and motherhood enter into the courts of law? What happened to seeking truth and justice? Will women ever have their own autonomy?”
— Anna Vasquez, President Innocence Network Executive Board, Director of Outreach and Education for the Innocence Project of Texas, Exoneree
— Anna Vasquez, President Innocence Network Executive Board, Director of Outreach and Education for the Innocence Project of Texas, Exoneree
“The polar opposite of true crime is not crime fiction, but rather convictions for crimes that never occurred at all. Valena Beety’s compelling must-read book explores how often gender bias plays a role in these cases, and how new Supreme Court rulings and state laws threaten a new wave of no-crime wrongful convictions.”
— Brandon Garrett, author of Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong
— Brandon Garrett, author of Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong
“A longtime leader in the Innocence Movement, Valena Beety turns her brilliant scholarly eye to the unique injustices experienced by women and queer people in the criminal legal system. Full of wit and wisdom, PINK CRIME is an absolute gem. After reading it, I guarantee you’ll be seeing red.”
— Daniel Medwed, author of Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison
— Daniel Medwed, author of Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison
“Beety’s deep experience in the criminal defense bar shines through in this reader-friendly book. She makes a convincing case for reconceptualizing a frightful array of prosecutions against women and lgbtq people for the crime of living as themselves.”
— Libby Adler, author of Gay Priori: A Queer Critical Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform
— Libby Adler, author of Gay Priori: A Queer Critical Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform
“Pink Crime is a wake-up call. While educating readers about a problem most are likely not even aware of, Valena also importantly lifts up the voices of queer people and women who have been victimized by the criminal justice system.”
— Nathan Maxwell, Senior Legal Counsel, Lambda Legal
— Nathan Maxwell, Senior Legal Counsel, Lambda Legal
“Pink Crime weaves together the threads of prosecutorial misconduct and the use of junk science with the fall of Roe v. Wade and creeping threats to data privacy not only to educate but to activate all of us to stop the ongoing criminalization of our bodies and identities.”
— Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, Deputy Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project
— Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, Deputy Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project
“Drawing on years of experience as a defense lawyer, Professor Beety shows how the criminal law shapes and impacts the lives of pregnant people, parenthood, and queer identity. Her compassionate and clear perspective provides a guide to anyone who wants to better understand how individuals are ensnared in a system that harms not only those directly impacted but all of us.”
— Aziza Ahmed, author of Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS
— Aziza Ahmed, author of Risk and Resistance: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS
“Mothers convicted of harming their children based on junk science. Parents criminalized for seeking gender-affirming care for their trans kids. Pregnant people imprisoned for taking the drugs prescribed to them during their pregnancies. If you can’t imagine a world in which this happens, Valena Beety’s Pink Crime will upend the way that you see the criminal legal system–and give you the tools you need to change that system in your own community.”
— Leigh Goodmark, author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism
— Leigh Goodmark, author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism
“Be prepared to get angry. Pink Crime details the outrageous and staggering number of ways that, even in the twenty-first century, criminalization continues to punish women and queer people who make decisions about their own bodies.”
— Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women
— Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women
“Valena Beety’s work combines the rigor of her academic training with her deep experience as a lawyer for people who are wrongfully convicted. In her searing and memorable new book, Pink Crime, she explores a trap that can ensnare the innocent—prosecutions based on suspicions rooted not primarily in what they’ve done, but in who they are. Beety shows how pregnant and queer people are vulnerable to charges others would not face, especially when poverty plays a role. And she also offers hope by charging a path to resistance.”
— Emily Bazelon, author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
— Emily Bazelon, author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
“With real cases and convictions, Beety reveals how standards of gender and gender performance are deeply imbedded into the criminal justice system. Her clear analysis reveals how women and other marginalized genders are legally punished for variance, deviance, and existence.”
— Koa Beck, author of White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
— Koa Beck, author of White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind