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Karlene Faith

Karlene Faith (1938 – May 15, 2017) was a Canadian writer, feminist, scholar, and human rights activist.[1] She was a professor emerita at the Simon Fraser University School of Criminology.[2]

Karlene Faith

1938 (1938)

Aylsham, Saskatchewan, Cananda

May 15, 2017(2017-05-15) (aged 78–79)

Vancouver, British Columbia, Cananda

University of California, Santa Cruz (BA, PhD)

Early life and career[edit]

Karlene Faith was born in Aylsham, Saskatchewan in 1938. She was the oldest of six children and her father was a United Church Minister. After moving to a small town in Montana near a jail, Faith often witnessed police brutality.


In 1970, she earned her anthropology degree with Highest Honors at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also played a role in developing the Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project in 1972.[1] Faith received a Danforth Fellowship to study for four more years at UC Santa Cruz, earning her Ph.D. in 1981.

Personal life[edit]

She died of an aortic aneurysm on May 15, 2017, in Vancouver, Canada.[8]

In popular culture[edit]

Faith is portrayed in the feature film Charlie Says by actress Merritt Wever. The film is partly based on Faith's book, The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten and portrays her work with the Manson women after the Tate–LaBianca murders.[9]

Toward New Horizons for Women in Distance Education: International Perspectives (Routledge, 1988)

[10]

Unruly Women: The Politics of Confinement & Resistance (Press Gang, 1st ed., 1993; Seven Stories Press, 2nd ed., 2011)

[11]

Seeking Shelter: A State of Battered Women (edited with Dawn H. Currie, Collective Press, 1993)

Madonna: Bawdy & Soul (University of Toronto Press, 1997)

[12]

The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten: Life Beyond the Cult (Northeastern University Press, 2001)

[13]