ONLINE FIRST
published on June 27, 2018
Chlo? Taylor
https://doi.org/10.5840/socphiltoday201862656
Anti-Carceral Feminism and Sexual Assault¡ªA Defense
A Critique of the Critique of the Critique of Carceral Feminism
Most mainstream feminist anti-rape scholarship and activism may be described as carceral feminism, insofar as it fails to engage with critiques of the criminal punishment system and endorses law-and-order responses to sexual and gendered violence. Mainstream feminist anti-rape scholars and activists often view increased conviction rates and longer sentences as a political goal¡ªor, at the very least, are willing to collaborate with police and lament cases where perpetrators of sexual violence are given ¡°light¡± or non-custodial sentences. Prison abolitionists, on the other hand, have tended to insist that most lawbreakers are non-violent and that the ¡°dangerous¡± are ¡°few¡± (Morris, ¡°But What About the Dangerous Few?¡±; Carrier and Pich¨¦, ¡°Blind Spots of Abolitionist Thought in Academia¡±), thus avoiding serious engagement with the widespread phenomenon of sexual violence (Critical Resistance and INCITE, ¡°Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex¡±). Despite the prevalence of carceral feminism, to my knowledge no feminist scholar has explicitly embraced this label, and the closest I have found to a defense of carceral feminism is feminist legal scholar Lise Gotell¡¯s ¡°critique of the critique of carceral feminism¡± (Gotell, ¡°Reassessing the Place of Criminal Law Reform¡±). For this reason, it is with Gotell¡¯s article that I primarily engage in defending anti-carceral feminism and prison abolitionism even in the difficult case of sexual assault.