Black women, victimization, and the limitations of the liberal state
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480617724828 |
| Author | Lisa L Miller,Shatema Threadcraft |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
724828TCR0010.1177/1362480617724828Theoretical CriminologyThreadcraft and Miller
research-article2017
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2017, Vol. 21(4) 478 –493
Black women, victimization,
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617724828
DOI: 10.1177/1362480617724828
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liberal state
Shatema Threadcraft
Rutgers University, USA
Lisa L Miller
Rutgers University, USA
Abstract
This article challenges contemporary understandings of the US carceral state by
confronting the realities of exceptionally high rates of homicide victimization among
Black women and considering the implications for equality and understandings of the
carceral state. We propose that neither the US state nor the US penal order can be
fully understood without taking account of the exceptionally high rates of violence to
which Black women are exposed. Conceptions of the carceral state that do not situate
criminal justice within the larger context of raced and gendered subject formation depict
criminal “justice” as an arena composed almost entirely of adult males. This obscures
the realities of how state form contributes not only to criminal justice practices but
also to risk of violence. Black women are uniquely situated at the intersection of risk of
violence, and risk of experiencing the collateral damage of the carceral state. Without
significant attention to issues of connectivity and care, which are directly affected by the
carceral state and by inter-personal violence, we cannot fully understand the concepts
of “carceral” or “state”.
Keywords
Gender, homicide, race, race and gender politics, state
Corresponding author:
Lisa L Miller, Political Science, Rutgers University, 89 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08904, USA.
Email: miller@polisci.rutgers.edu
Threadcraft and Miller
479
Introduction
The United States has exceptionally high rates of homicide and imprisonment relative to
other rich democracies, and both disproportionately affect African-Americans. Lisa L
Miller (2015) has referred to these conditions as a form of racialized state failure, that is,
the failure of the state to protect citizens from street crime, as well as to minimize the use
of state repressive practices as mechanisms of social order. The state failure concept,
however, only goes so far. It relies on a narrowly liberal conception of the state, one that
is primarily aimed at monopolizing the use of force to insulate public places from violent
crime (per Weber) and to protect citizens from an overbearing state (per Locke). This
conceptualization is problematic as applied to the experiences of women, because they
are most likely to be murdered in private settings by current or former partners, and
because a strong state may be less likely to present a lethal threat to women. This is par-
ticularly true as applied to black American women, who are murdered at rates substan-
tially higher than white American men.
There has been very little theoretical work that confronts the fact that black American
women are disproportionately exposed to risk of inter-personal violence from intimates
and family members, and that the carceral state has done little to shield black women
from such high rates of violence. Nor has there been much consideration of how the very
form of the US state itself has contributed to high rates of violent victimization for black
women. Indeed, black women’s experiences of overpolicing and of violent victimization
are virtually absent from accounts of the political and socio-economic forces driving the
rise of mass incarceration and its disproportionate effect on black men. An important
exception is Beth Richie (2015), whose work we explore below.
In this article, we confront contemporary understandings of the US penal state with
the stark realities of high rates of homicide victimization among black women, and con-
sider the implications of this victimization for citizenship, equality and the state.
Specifically, we argue that neither the US state nor the US penal order can be fully under-
stood without taking account of the exceptionally high rates of violence to which black
women are exposed. Conceptions of the carceral state that do not situate criminal justice
within the larger context of raced and gendered subject formation depict the criminal
“justice” system as an arena composed almost exclusively of adult males and as only
occupying spaces in which various practices of the carceral state act on fully formed
individuals. The effects are then calculated in cost–benefit terms (lost wages, absentee
fathers, and so on) without significant attention to issues of connectivity and care, which
are also affected by the carceral state, and which disproportionately affect women.
Such frameworks cannot take account of the ways in which the lived experience of
violence itself affects people’s “ability to do and to become all that they would […]
including their ability to live as nonviolent individuals among nonviolent individuals”
(Threadcraft, 2014: 743). Moreover, the nature of the state’s role and responsibilities
with respect to minimizing violence, no matter the source, cannot be fully understood
without acknowledgment of the ways in which different forms of violence are prioritized
by the state. The modern liberal state tends to make a distinction between public and
private violence and prioritizes the former in its deployment of ameliorative resources,
whatever the effect of said resources on women, families, and communities.
480
Theoretical Criminology 21(4)
We argue, with feminist political theorists, that while liberalism has provided the
foundation for the state’s securing of citizens from both public violence and excessive
state violence, it offers little protection from private violence. Contemporary scholarship
on punishment reinforces liberal narratives about the role of the state by highlighting the
damaging effects of imprisonment and other repressive practices on the bodies of black
men, while providing few accounts of the repressive practices to which black women are
subject, nor considering which state-building practices might better insulate women
from serious violence (Nussbaum, 2001, 2004, 2011; see also Sen, 1971).
Drawing together state violence, street violence, and inter-personal violence provides
an opportunity to develop a richer understanding of the “state of the state” in the United
States, with respect to criminal justice.1 The carceral state literature typically disembod-
ies violent crime from analyses of state repression but not only are many incarcerated
individuals themselves victims of violence, those communities which experience the
highest imprisonment rates overlap closely with those experiencing the most life-threat-
ening violence (Krivo and Peterson, 2010; Western, 2006).
Moreover, security from violence from any source is a first-order political problem,
and one that members of a polity expect the state to address (Miller, 2015). By examin-
ing imprisonment without victimization, the literature on the carceral state has ana-
lyzed the violence of modern political systems, but failed to grapple with the positive,
state-building aspects of modern liberal democracies that have reduced violent vic-
timization across wealthy democratic countries, including for many whites in the
United States. As a result, we know a great deal about the effect of the carceral state on
men but far less about the relationship between the carceral state and violence against
women, particularly against black women, who are exposed to surprisingly high rates
of lethal violence.
We argue that a narrow, liberal conception of the state in both popular and scholarly
discourse obscures the types of risk to which black women are exposed, and makes
reform more difficult. The proceeding analysis thus asks, can a classically liberal con-
ception of the state reduce, or even recognize violence against women? And more spe-
cifically, can a racialized liberal state protect black women, whose experience of violent
victimization without redress is such a long part of the US story? We begin presenting
three dominant causal narratives about the rise of the US carceral state in contemporary
literature. From there, we provide data on the exceptionally high rates of lethal violence
to which black women are exposed in the USA and use these high rates of black women’s
victimization to illustrate the limitations of current narratives. We conclude with some
thoughts on how a more comprehensive analysis of violence, justice, and the state might
better address gendered and raced violence.
The gendered research on the carceral state
Since the 1990s, a wide range of scholars in the social sciences have sought to under-
stand the political, social, and economic origins of the exceptionally high rates of impris-
onment in the USA and, in particular, the dramatic racial disparities therein. This research
falls, broadly, into three categories: economic; racial; and institutional. Almost none of
these accounts, however, consider the high rates of violent crime, particularly homicide,
Threadcraft and Miller
481
that distinguish the USA from many other developed democracies nor are there many
scholarly analyses of the rise of the carceral state that take account of race, violent crime,
and gender.2
Economic explanations for the rise of the...
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