What Is Carceral Feminism?

• DOI: 10.1177/0090591719889946
• Author: Anna Terwiel
• Date: 01 August 2020
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719889946

Political Theory

2020, Vol. 48(4) 421 –442

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591719889946

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Article

What Is Carceral

Feminism?

Anna Terwiel1

Abstract

In recent years, critiques of “carceral feminism” have proliferated, objecting

to feminist support for punitive policies against sexual and gendered violence

that have contributed to mass incarceration. While the convergence of

feminist and antiprison efforts is important, this essay argues that critiques

of carceral feminism are limited insofar as they present a binary choice

between the criminal legal system and informal community justice practices.

First, this binary allows critics to overlook rather than engage feminist

disagreements about the state and sexual harm. Second, the narrow focus

on alternative solutions to harm obscures the plural and contested nature

of prison abolition, which may include efforts to seize the state and to

problematize carceral logics. Drawing on Michel Foucault, alongside Angela

Davis and other contemporary prison abolitionists, I suggest that feminist

prison abolition is better served by envisioning a spectrum of decarceration.

Keywords

carceral feminism, prison abolition, transformative justice, decarceration,

problematization

Adding to established feminist practices such as Take Back the Night

marches and survivor speak-outs, the hashtag MeToo has inspired scores of

people to share their experiences of sexual harassment and assault, thereby

demonstrating through sheer numbers that sexual violence is a pervasive

1Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA

Corresponding Author:

Anna Terwiel, 300 Summit Street, Hartford, CT 06106, USA.

Email: anna.terwiel@trincoll.edu

889946PTXXXX10.1177/0090591719889946Political TheoryTerwiel

research-article2019

422 Political Theory 48(4)

social problem. The accounts of individual survivors help render concrete

the staggering statistics about the prevalence of sexual harm: one in six

women in the United States experience rape—a rate that increases to one in

five for women of color and one in three for Native women.1 Recognizing

that “the personal is political,” feminists have long argued, can alleviate

isolation and self-blame and motivate collective action for structural

change. But feminist prison abolitionists have expressed concern that the

#MeToo movement could also have the undesirable effect of increasing

support for prisons as “solutions” to sexual violence. Taking sexual vio-

lence seriously, they point out, all too often means supporting more or

harsher punishments for perpetrators. Some of the most high-profile accu-

sations in the #MeToo era have led to firings, settlements, and hearings, but

some have also led to criminal proceedings.2 While feminist prison aboli-

tionists generally respect individual survivors’ decision to press criminal

charges, they strongly caution the feminist movement against enlisting the

state’s criminal legal system.3 Past antiviolence feminists, they warn, have

inadvertently contributed to the rise of mass incarceration and the American

prison state.4 So-called “tough on crime” policies have been passed in the

name of protecting women, but rather than diminish gendered and sexual

violence, these measures have expanded the hold of the punishment appa-

ratus over racially and economically marginalized people of all genders.5

From the perspective of joint concerns about intimate and state violence,

calls have emerged for #MeToo to avoid “carceral feminism,” understood

as “a reliance on policing, prosecution, and imprisonment to resolve gen-

dered or sexual violence.”6

This essay shares the wish of feminist prison abolitionists to address sex-

ual violence as well as their critiques of the criminal legal system and the

American prison state as sources of violence and injustice.7 To see policing

and punishment simply as feminist solutions is an act of bad faith when the

injustices of mass incarceration—the confinement of 2.3 million people, pre-

dominantly Black and Hispanic men; the brutal conditions of detention; the

lasting legal discrimination faced after release, to name but a few—are widely

known. At the same time, leaving survivors with no choice but to engage this

criminal legal system or forego any chance at accountability or protection is

unsatisfying, to say the least. In response to this dilemma, a growing number

of feminists are advocating community-based justice mechanisms that do not

involve the state. Practices of restorative or transformative justice—in which

community members work together to hold offenders accountable, facilitate

victim healing, and (especially in case of transformative justice) address the

root causes of violence—are presented as superior to carceral approaches.

Many examples of community-based justice showcase powerful collective