Drunk Hunters: Constituting Logics of Law Enforcement Phlebotomy

• In Event: 30662 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Policing Issues 2

Abstract

In at least 17 states in the United States, law enforcement officers are drawing blood from drivers they suspect of impairment. Law enforcement phlebotomy (LEP) sits at the intersection of policing and medicine, with serious implications for both institutions and the impaired driver at its center, yet this practice is understudied. To better understand how law enforcement officers make sense of their use of phlebotomy, this study asks: What are the logics of law enforcement phlebotomy? I answer this question through 27 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with law enforcement phlebotomists and LEP program officials from 18 law enforcement agencies across 10 states. Logics of law enforcement—control, efficiency, and juridical effectiveness—predominate, but in this uneasy marriage of two professions, the normative logics of medicine, like care and consent, complicate law enforcement phlebotomy’s logical landscape. The clash between these inter-institutional logics is visible in debates about the sufficiency of officer phlebotomist training and appropriateness of nonconsensual, forced blood draws. This article finds that the logics of law enforcement phlebotomy are under construction, but ultimately serve a unifying function for police phlebotomists, as critiques about training and use-of-force policies are meant to strengthen law enforcement phlebotomy, not weaken it.

Author

• Anne Kathleen Johnson, Portland State University