The State Draws Blood: Law Enforcement Phlebotomy as a Tool of Biopolitical Power

• In Event: Body Politics, State Power, and Resistance

Abstract

Actors within the criminal legal field are adopting increasingly invasive surveillance tools as they seek to address social problems in the United States. Since 1995, police officers have begun drawing blood themselves from suspected impaired drivers, in efforts to increase efficiency and avoid clashes with medical staff who historically conducted phlebotomy for forensic testing. Drawing on 27 interviews with officer phlebotomists and police phlebotomy administrators across 18 law enforcement agencies, this study examines the biopolitical implications that emerge as police phlebotomists grapple with conducting forced, nonconsensual blood draws. Three main themes emerge that reveal the effects of this vein-level example of biopower. First, in law enforcement agencies where official policies on forced blood draws are often absent or ambiguous, officers describe obtaining coerced compliance, where they use the threat of physical restraint to secure consent, blurring the line between voluntary agreement and submission to state power. Second, law enforcement phlebotomy is redefining refusal for people in police custody, as for some agencies, a verbal "no" to the blood draw is insufficient; refusal must be physically embodied (e.g., pulling away) to be recognized, a distinction not communicated to the patient/suspect. Finally, acknowledging their dual roles as officer and phlebotomist, respondents struggle to balance the care-based logics of phlebotomy with the control-based logics of policing, particularly in cases involving fatal crashes. As the state’s biopolitical project to achieve public security enters motorists’ veins, forced blood draws reinforce Agamben’s (1998) theory of bare life—where the nonconsenting suspect becomes a vulnerable body immobilized for state intrusion. This research contributes to scholarship on the evolving boundaries of bodily autonomy under modern biopolitical governance.

Author

• Anne Kathleen Johnson, Washington State University Vancouver