Seeking Alternatives in the Shadows of the Punitive State: Anti-Carceral Responses to Domestic Violence, 1973 - 1986

• In Event: 2433 - Law and Gender

Abstract

The emergence of contemporary feminist social movements challenging gender-based violence coincides with the timing of the punitive turn in U.S. carceral history in the early to mid-1970s. The participation of feminists in demands for increased criminalization of domestic violence, sexual assault and, more recently, sex trafficking has led to the naming of carceral feminism as one outcome of the intersection between these social movements and law and order policies associated with current conditions of mass incarceration. This article examines the formative period of the anti-domestic violence movement, from 1973 to 1986, before the establishment of a hegemonic criminalization response to domestic violence and at the onset of the expanding U.S. carceral state. This research unearths internal social movement debates regarding the nascent turn to criminalization and proposed alternatives as feminist social movement actors weighed crime control strategies against those associated with the welfare state. It also reveals the dynamics of a more radical Socialist Feminist Caucus within the national anti-domestic violence movement and the emergence of anti-carceral women of color politics. This historical case study draws upon 60 semi-structured interviews with social movement actors participating in the anti-domestic violence movement from 1973 to 1986 and archival legislative data, social movement ephemera and media from that period in order to explore feminist alternatives to criminalization at the eve of the U.S. era of mass incarceration.

Author

• Mimi Kim, California State University, Long Beach