Documenting Mass Rape: Medical Evidence Collection Techniques as Humanitarian Technology

Morse, Jaimie

doi:10.5038/1911-9933.8.3.6

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Sociologists have observed that material objects can accrue moral and economic worth affecting how actors make decisions about the value of their health, possessions, finances, and the natural environment (Barnard 2016;Degenshein 2017;Fourcade 2011;Livne 2014;Zelizer 2010). "Humanitarian technologies" define, standardize, and commensurate what counts as sexual violence (Morse 2014), and end-of-life palliative care moralizes scarcity of material medical interventions (Livne 2014). These examples reveal the entanglements of technologies with moral projects, yet sociologists of science, technology, and knowledge have yet to analyze how and why expert actors imbue technologies with symbolic value to justify that a certain technology is "the right tool for the job.…”

Section: Opioids and The Biomedicalization Of Sufferingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technologies of Expertise: Opioids and Pain Management’s Credibility Crisis

Pryma¹

2022

Am Sociol Rev

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Journalistic accounts of the opioid crisis often paint prescription opioids as the instrument of profit-minded pharmaceutical companies who enlisted pain specialists to overprescribe addictive drugs. Broadening beyond a focus on pharmaceutical power, this article offers a comparative-historical explanation, rooted in inter- and intra-professional dynamics, of the global increase in rates of opioid prescribing. Through archival analysis and in-depth interviews with pain specialists and public-health officials in the United States and France, I explain how and why opioids emerged as the “right tool for the job” of pain relief in the 1980s and 1990s, affecting how pain science is produced, pain management is administered, and a right to pain relief is promised in different national contexts. I argue that opioids, selected and destigmatized as the technology for pain relief, helped establish a global network of pain expertise, linking a fledgling field of pain specialists to the resources of global-health governance, public-health administration, humanitarian organizations, and pharmaceutical companies. I then compare how U.S. and French pain specialists leveraged opioids to strengthen the boundaries of their emergent fields. Pain specialists’ differing degrees of autonomy in each country’s network of pain expertise shaped the extent to which opioids could dominate pain management and lead to crisis. Tracing the relationship between opioids and pain expertise, I show how technologies can drive crises of expert credibility if and when they escape the control of the networked fields that selected them.

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Section: Opioids and The Biomedicalization Of Sufferingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Technologies of Expertise: Opioids and Pain Management’s Credibility Crisis

Pryma¹

2022

Am Sociol Rev

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“…The process of documenting forensic evidence of sexual violence is ideally standardized using forensic medical certificates, which are formal documents–sometimes issued by a government or court system—that trained clinicians use to systematically record forensic medical evidence for use in legal proceedings [ 19 , 20 ]. An evaluation conducted in Kenya found that a greater degree of medical evidence documented using the Post-Rape Care (PRC) form (Appendix 1)—the standardized medical certificate used in Kenya–was associated with an increased likelihood of an adjudication outcome favoring the survivor [ 13 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the effectiveness of a mobile application to improve the quality, collection, and usability of forensic documentation of sexual violence

Kidenda¹,

Muchai²,

Green

et al. 2022

PLoS ONE

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Background Survivors of sexual violence deserve timely and high-quality forensic examination, evidence collection, and documentation as part of comprehensive care. However, in many countries, the quality of medical-legal documentation is severely limited. MediCapt is an innovative digital application that enables clinicians to document forensic medical evidence as well as capture and securely store forensic photographs of injuries. This study evaluated the effectiveness and usability of MediCapt to document forensic medical evidence of sexual violence. Methods This mixed-methods evaluation involved key-informant interviews, usability questionnaires, and forensic record reviews. Participants included clinicians, medical records personnel, information technology personnel, and health facility administrators, as well as law enforcement and legal professionals in Kenya. Results The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) data quality checklist found that using MediCapt led to significantly higher data-quality scores compared to paper-based forms. MediCapt forms scored higher on 23 of 26 checklist items. While a wide difference in quality was seen among paper-based forms, MediCapt appeared to both standardize and improve quality of documentation across sites. MediCapt strengths included data security and confidentiality, accuracy and efficiency, and supplemental documentation with photography. Weaknesses included infrastructure challenges, required technological proficiencies, and time to learn the new system. Although it is early to assess the impact of MediCapt on prosecutions, providers and law and justice sector professionals were optimistic about its usefulness. They identified MediCapt as appropriate for use with survivors of sexual violence and reported MediCapt’s legibility and photography features had already been commended by the court. Conclusion MediCapt was well-received across all sectors, its use was perceived as feasible and sustainable, and it significantly improved the quality of collected forensic data. It is anticipated this improvement in forensic documentation will increase successful prosecutions, strengthen accountability for perpetrators, and improve justice for survivors.

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“…Yet, as the book describes, most sexual assault cases do not proceed to trial, and available studies on case outcomes suggest no measureable correlation between forensic evidence and increased prosecution rates (Du Mont and White, 2007). These types of exams have been adopted by the World Health Organization and adapted for use in refugee camps and settings of armed conflict to document violations of international law and facilitate prosecution in domestic and international courts (Morse, 2014). Mulla’s analysis of the impact of these exams on victims in a relatively high-resource setting suggests great caution and, in her words, calls upon all concerned “to begin to imagine a way to challenge existing models and introduce more ethically informed modalities of intervention that better serve the needs of victims, nurses, prosecutors, rape crisis advocates, and even the state” (p. 36).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Documenting Mass Rape: Medical Evidence Collection Techniques as Humanitarian Technology

Cited by 6 publications

References 16 publications

Technologies of Expertise: Opioids and Pain Management’s Credibility Crisis

Technologies of Expertise: Opioids and Pain Management’s Credibility Crisis

Evaluating the effectiveness of a mobile application to improve the quality, collection, and usability of forensic documentation of sexual violence

Book review: Sameena Mulla, The Violence of Care: Rape Victims, Forensic Nurses, and Sexual Assault Intervention

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