Whose rape kit? Stabilizing the Vitullo® Kit through positivist criminology and protocol feminism

Abstract

Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholarship has increasingly focused on the rape kit, with scholars critiquing the gendered biases that are enacted through the medico-legal exam and how the kit itself serves as a technoscientific witness of rape. However, little scholarship has focused on the discourses surrounding the early US Vitullo® Kit. This article traces the stabilization of the kit from 1973 to 1987, attending to how community advocates embraced technoscientific protocols to intervene in medico-legal evidence collection. I bring insights from criminology in conversation with STS, to examine archival records associated with the Vitullo® Kit. I argue the kit emerged as a strategic feminist and positivist criminological intervention, in which discourses about the perceived reliability and objectivity of protocol technoscience were believed to counter gendered stereotypes embedded in the justice system. This project, sheds new light on the neglected contributions of community advocates in developing this kit.

Documenting the Document: The Forensic Hospital Report and Its Knowledge Moves

“…The relatively few contemporary socio-legal studies that engage with ANT typically do so with respect to complex technoscientific artefacts, such as rape kits (Quinlan, 2017; Shelby, 2020), forensic DNA evidence (Kruse, 2016), or Sentencing Information Systems (Hutton, 2012). These studies tend to share the goal of uncovering the contingencies behind the creation of their complex objects of interest, and how these processes come to be taken for granted – or what STS scholars might call ‘black boxed’ (e.g.…”

Why Sexual Assault Kits Were Not Tested: A Systematic Review

“…Police consider whether such features align with sexual assault stereotypes and subsequently process or close case investigations based on these determinations (Spohn et al, 2001). In fact, before the 1980s, it was common for police to subject sexual assault victims to psychiatric evaluations or polygraphs to confirm victimization (Shelby, 2018). Beyond credibility, lack of victim cooperation with an investigation has also been cited as a reason police choose not to submit SAKs for testing (Kaiser et al, 2017;Spohn & Tellis, 2010).…”

The Victimised Body: Sexual Violence, Incapacity, and the Materialisation of Unconscious Bodies in Rape Verdicts

“…The materialisation of the victim’s body is particularly evident in cases of sexual violence, because in these cases the victim’s body is both a crime scene and evidence (Laugerud, 2020a; Mulla, 2014; Smart, 1995). After a rape, the victim’s body is examined by forensic medical examiners who collect bodily traces that are analysed for DNA and toxins and search the body thoroughly for marks and bruises that indicate the use of force during the assault (Mulla, 2014; Quinlan, 2017; Shelby, 2020). Thus, the forensic medical examination considers the victim’s body at both the molecular and the molar level.…”