“Caring” Institutions Enacting Colonial and Gendered Violence toward Young Women of Color

• In Event: Neoliberal Care as Punishment: Abolition Feminist Interrogations of the “Benevolent” Carceral State

Abstract

Historical legacies of displacement, punishment, and violence have often overlooked young women of color. Whereas the structure of prisons and jails is the most common interpretation of carcerality, I show in this paper carceral spaces from Indian boarding schools to reform and correctional institutions that have existed throughout history, specifically the twentieth century. Through the analysis of archives, we can see how the development and evolution of these correctional institutions over time, connecting it to today’s expansion of “care” reforms for young women of color. Through testimonios/testimonies from 20 young women of color in the Southern Inland Region, a forgotten region in Southern California, tell us how these gendered carceral spaces continue to displace, discipline, and then banish them in modern times. Using a settler colonial lens, I argue that these correctional institutions continue to reproduce gender violence by labeling young women as “delinquents and dependents” to “deviants and immoral” and now under the banner of care by providing intensive care and supervision, mental health and healing services to those who experience trauma and are at “risk behavior.” From my findings, I offer the term corrective gendered spaces as an analytic framework for understanding group homes as an extension of the prison system where girls and young women, primarily Black, Brown, Indigenous, and from working-class backgrounds, are housed in spaces that resemble and function as detention that enacts colonial and gendered violence.

Author

• Joana Chavez