The Rape Kit’s Promise: Techno-optimism in the Fight Against the Backlog

Abstract

News of hundreds of thousands of untested forensic rape kits in police storage facilities and forensic labs across the United States has sparked a national dialogue about criminal justice responses to sexual assault. In a battle for more funding for forensic testing, victim advocacy organizations and activists are pointing to the necessity of rape kits for identifying and convicting sexual offenders. When tested, they argue, rape kits can ensure victims' healing and justice, and increase public safety. Current campaigns to reduce rape kit backlogs reflect a widespread techno-optimism around forensic technologies' ability to reduce and prevent violent crime. This optimism has a long history. The rape kit's development in the 1970s was fueled by anti-violence activists' hope that a new technology would improve criminal justice responses to sexual assault. The rape kit's history provides an insightful backdrop to current rape kit backlog campaigns and the optimistic sociotechnical imaginary of a society rid of sexual violence through forensic technologies that drives them. An analysis of textual data, including media articles, government reports, conference proceedings, and advocates' social media campaigns, reveals the history of techno-optimism around the rape kit and its recent expressions in rape kit backlog campaigns. This data also draws attention to the less visible consequences of this techno-optimism: a booming forensic industry profiting from the optimism around the rape kit, an increasing pressure on sexual assault survivors to comply with forensic procedures, and a narrowing of critical dialogues on criminal justice responses to sexual assault and sexual assault prevention.

As Implicações Invisibilizadas do Tecno-Otimismo da Vigilância Eletrónica em Portugal

“…I also recall this interaction every time I read or hear about the most recent statistics on electronic monitoring, showing an evident expansion of this instrument in recent years (Direção-Geral de Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais, n.d.-e). The apparent contradiction between this prisoner' narrative and the dominant discourse, based on techno-optimism (Quinlan, 2020), leads me to question in this article, through a historically and sociologically informed scepticism (Benjamin, 2019, p. 26), the use of electronic monitoring in Portugal.…”

“…As explained by Andrea Quinlan in her work on forensic rape kits in the United States of America (Quinlan, 2020), techno-optimism around some technologies has been co-constructed (Jasanoff, 2004) as a socio-technical imaginary anchored in the idea that science and technology can effectively solve complex problems in the criminal justice system. That is a socio-technical imaginary inscribed in institutions, culture, and artefacts (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009) and widely disseminated by the media, policymakers, activists and victims (Quinlan, 2020).…”

“…The Invisible Implications of Techno-Optimism of Electronic Monitoring in Portugal . Rafaela Granja network expansion, the ideals on which it is anchored and promoted, and its implications within domestic violence (see also Quinlan 2020).…”

“…The Invisible Implications of Techno-Optimism of Electronic Monitoring in Portugal . Rafaela Granja undermines collective capacities to imagine alternative solutions to domestic violence (Quinlan, 2020;Morozov, 2013). More broadly, techno-optimism also narrows public dialogue about preventing violence rather than promoting debates about the social and cultural roots of violence and the reform of the criminal justice system.…”

“…In this article, drawing inspiration from social studies of science and technology and surveillance studies, rather than debating the efficiency of the electronic monitoring system in Portugal, I aim to explore how socio-technical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015) around this penal instrument reflect a broad techno-optimism (Quinlan, 2020). More particularly, I reflect upon how techno-optimism has made invisible (a) the expansion of the penal network; (b) the co-optation of the family in the penal sphere and the transmutation of the domestic space into a space of confinement; (c) and, concerning domestic violence, the characterisation of this social phenomenon as having a technoscientific solution, thus narrowing the public debate on its prevention.…”