Instabilities and Private Suffering Within: Investigating Sexual Assault Kits in Medical and Legal Practice

• In Event: 033 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 13. Gender and Sexual Violence

Abstract

Sexual assault kits, and the forensic DNA evidence they contain, are often credited with strengthening police investigative powers and increasing the likelihood of successful prosecutions of sexual offenders. Through the recent rise of news media on sexual assault kit backlogs in the United States and sexual assault forensics in Canada, sexual assault kits have gained a seemingly stable public identity as essential tools for prosecuting and convicting sexual offenders and ensuring justice for victims. This public identity of sexual assault kits obscures the ways that kits in practice often fail to live up to their promises. This paper challenges popular conceptions of sexual assault kits by examining medical and legal practices in which kits are involved. It draws on interview data from 62 forensic nurses, police, lawyers, and advocates in rape crisis centres in 26 cities and communities across Ontario, Canada. It traces three sets of medical and legal practices that involve the kit: 1) medical examiners granting victims access to the kit, 2) police investigators presenting the kit to victims, and 3) lawyers and police making use of the kits’ contents in sexual assault investigations and prosecutions. By tracing action in these sites, this paper illustrates how kits in practice can become tools for excluding, coercing, and interrogating some victims. In doing so, this paper illustrates some of the sources of instability within the seemingly stable network of medical and legal practices around sexual assault kits.

Author

• Andrea Quinlan, Trent University