Carcerality and Care: Interrogating the State as Caretaker of Latina Girls in Foster Care

• In Event: Carceral Care

Abstract

“Carcerality and Care” excavates the experiences of Latina girls in foster care with so-called helping services mandated by the state including therapeutic services, drug and alcohol treatment programs, and other services offered to youth in foster care. It highlights the sly rhetoric of care that tries but fails to conceal the containment and control embedded in these services. Building on what Ruth Gilmore calls “police humanitarianism,” this paper centers what I term transcarceral care, which refers to programs, interventions, and placements meant to reform and discipline the behaviors of racialized youth, under the guise of care. Under the logic of transcarceral care, programs meant to help foster girls instead become technologies of surveillance where the punitive eye of the state remains trained on their behaviors. “Carcerality and Care” draws from Black and Chicana feminist theorists and historians, including Dorothy Roberts and Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, who critically examine state sanctioned carceral tactics wielded against vulnerable populations. Additionally, this paper critically examines the language used by state officials in California court transcripts that detail Latinx parents’ attempts to regain custody of their children, to argue that the state weaponizes care language to mask its use of carcerality in containing Latina foster girls.

Author

• Isabella C. Restrepo, University of California, San Diego