The Carceral Creep: Gender-Based Violence, Race, and the Expansion of the Punitive State, 1973–1983

Abstract

The development of the feminist anti-domestic violence movement in the United States illustrates the trajectory from a social movement field devoid of carceral involvement to one fully occupied by the agents of crime control. Countering a narrative that often begins with the Violence against Women Act of 1994, this study demonstrates how the roots of carceral feminism extend back to the movement’s first decade from 1973 to 1983. This study analyzes data from 60 social movement leaders. The pluralist coalition resulting from a successful lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department, the creation of the victim witness program in San Francisco, and the development of the Community Coordinated Response in Duluth, Minnesota, represent mechanisms of engagement with law enforcement tied to innovative organizational forms. The process called the “carceral creep” describes how early social movement successes against an initially unresponsive criminal justice system evolved into collaborative relationships that altered the autonomy and constitution of initial social movement organizations. The creation of new organizational forms and their replication contributed to today’s carceral feminism. These developments were accompanied by persisting gender, race, and class tropes used to justify pro-criminalization strategies and obfuscate impacts on marginalized communities.

social movements, domestic violence, intersectionality, carceral state, carceral feminism