"A Little Right of Center": Carceral Feminism and the Expansion of Biosurveillance

Abstract:In the United States, feminists within mainstream rape crisis advocacy have been working to address rape by advocating to end the DNA backlog and therefore, the expansion of DNA databases, locally and nationally. Despite criticisms from radical abolition feminists for practicing carceral feminism that incarcerates more Black and Brown people, rape crisis advocates have been continuing their entanglements with criminal justice, fully recognizing the contradictory ends of such investments. In this paper, I explore their continued carceral investments, through underlying logics and justifications based in science and law and the impacts of doing so, as it relates to the problem of racialized policing. Relying on Black feminist epistemologies and interdisciplinary methodologies, my analysis draws upon archived documents, reports, legislations, and ethnographically driven interviews and observations with and amongst state and non-state actors, who are stakeholders in DNA biosurveillance. I argue that carceral feminists continue their carceral investments through two justifications—materiality and recidivism—that results in intensification of policing in communities of color by expanding genome based racialized biosurveillance. The implications of their justifications further harm survivors of violence, and produce a multifaceted recidivism, that is unbounded spacio-temporally, deepening and furthering state reach within communities of color in perpetuity.