Abstract
Rape crisis centers (RCCs) were established during the mainstream anti-rape movement in the United States during the 1970s. In the decades that followed, RCCs began to depend on governmental grants to stay open, shifting the antagonistic relationship that existed between many RCCs and state structures. Previous research has conceptualized this RCC institutionalization as a reluctant concession requisite to the continuation of victim services and the anti-rape movement. This article draws upon three years of ethnographic research and 40 interviews at a United States RCC to illustrate how institutionalization facilitated one RCC’s complicity in the expansion of the carceral state. I propose the transformation of this RCC illuminates a sexual assault response “bait and switch” that serves carceral agendas. I reach this conclusion using data drawn from three themes: (1) the outsourcing of the hotline and conversion to criminal-legal victim services, (2) criminal-legal integration that did not expand the influence of the RCC, and (3) the facilitation of the criminalization of victims through a process of net widening. Building from previous research, these findings document the result of criminal-legal integration at one RCC: the expansion of the carceral state into the center, to the detriment of victims and efforts to end sexual assault.
In 2016, one of the oldest rape crisis centers (RCCs) in United States added one sentence to the mission statement displayed on their website: We believe that every person has the right to live free of sexual assault. We are working to eliminate rape and abuse and the suffering they cause in our community. We challenge all forms of oppression and recognize their connection to sexual violence. (Emphasis added)
Previous research has documented the links between the rise of neoliberalism, institutionalization of sexual assault response, and reliance on the carceral sexual assault solution (Bumiller, 2008; Corrigan, 2013b). The turn of feminist organizations and activism toward carceral solutions has been termed carceral feminism (Bernstein, 2010). Within this typology of feminism, punitive criminal-legal solutions are used in an attempt to advance gender equality, presenting “social justice as criminal justice” (Bernstein, 2010, p. 57). Relatedly, Gottschalk (2015) has pushed for examination of new growth areas of the carceral state. This article builds from this scholarship by examining specific manifestations of neoliberalism and carcerality in a social justice–oriented RCC, locating the expansion of the carceral state in the center itself.
This study utilizes institutional ethnographic data collected at a U.S. RCC from 2012 to 2015. The findings of this study reveal how one RCC’s daily practices contradicted their mission statement in ways that expanded the reach of the carceral state. In this article, I identify three implications of carceral expansion within the RCC, culminating in what I propose is a criminal-legal “bait and switch” of sexual assault response, wherein legal gains are offered to a RCC and then traded for carceral motives. I first detail the process by which outsourcing of the hotline transformed the RCC from a service for all victims into a service for victims within the criminal-legal system, exchanging intersectional victim services for carceral feminism. I then draw from examples of interactions between the RCC and criminal-legal system to show how the center was unsuccessful in their intention to positively influence criminal-legal views of sexual assault. Lastly, I illustrate how locations of the RCC’s advocacy became sites of carceral net widening. I propose that this bait and switch expanded the carceral state into the center, defeating the RCC’s own structurally intersectional vision of what is needed to end sexual assault.
Literature Review
The Carceral State
Sexual assault prosecution and the U.S. carceral state share a foundation within the legacy of structural racism. This first organized response to rape allegations functioned to maintain the white supremacist social order after slavery. Sexual assault accusations were used as the grounds for the lynching of thousands of black men, based on unsubstantiated claims of having raped white women (Bevacqua, 2000; Davis, 1981; McGuire, 2010).
The antebellum trope of the sexually violent black man was central to the development of contemporary U.S. carceral policies of the war on drugs, a set of legislative acts instituted from the 1980s through 2000s. Politicians fueled moral panics about “wilding” (racialized gang rape) to gain public support for the carceral agenda of the war on drugs (Bumiller, 2008). The deployment of a moral panic centered on the racialized fear of rape is an example of what criminologists have termed the criminal-legal bait and switch. This concept refers to the stoking of public fear of violent crime to gain support for carceral policies (Welch, 2005). Once support is established, rather than focusing violent crimes, nonviolent drug offenders became the target of these policies (Donziger & Donziger, 1996; Welch, 2005).
The expansion of the carceral state during the war on drugs occurred through a process of net widening (Austin & Krisburg, 1981; Welch, 2005). This term refers to the development of enhanced surveillance strategies, creation of new crimes through legislative policy, and establishment of mandatory minimums in prison sentencing (Welch, 2005). As a result of these initiatives, the incarceration rate (relatively stable from 1920 to 1970) skyrocketed. In 2012, a total of 2.23 million people were incarcerated in the United States, almost 7 times the total in 1972 (Travis, Western, & Redburn, 2014). These political maneuvers have had a devastating impact on black communities. While black people comprise 13% of the U.S. population and use drugs at similar rates to people of other races (Taxy, Samuel, & Adams, 2015), 29% of those arrested for drug violations (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2016), and nearly 40% of those incarcerated for drug crimes are black (Taxy et al., 2015).
Sexual Assault Response and Formal Reporting
U.S. measurements of lifetime sexual assault victimization range from one in five to one in three women, and 1 in 71 to 1 in 12 men (Breiding et al., 2014; Fisher, Daigle, Cullen, & Turner, 2003). It is the most underreported crime in the United States, with at least 90% of sexual assault not reported to the police (Fisher et al., 2003).
Criminal-legal response systems have been found to mistreat and distrust victims in ways unique to sexual abuse cases in what has been termed “the second rape” (Belknap 2010; Madigan & Gamble, 1991). Low arrest, prosecution, and conviction rates of sexual assault have persisted over the past 40 years (Belknap, 2010; Morabito, Williams, & Pattavina, 2019). Scholarship ties the high attrition rates for sexual assault cases to the myth that false rape accusations are common (Morabito, Pattavina, & Williams, 2016). The measured rate of false accusations is between 0.005% and 2.0% (Belknap, 2010).
This signals a change in how false rape accusations have been culturally understood since the antebellum era. Scholars have tied the contemporary disbelief of rape victims to legacy of the myth of the black rapist. The myth of the black rapist developed a stereotypical cultural understanding of sexual assault: that “real rape” was a physically violent act committed by a stranger, who was likely a man of color (Bumiller, 2008; Davis, 1981; Estrich, 1987). Thus, the permeation of the myth of the black rapist makes sexual assault outside of this conception unbelievable in the public imaginary. Research has established that approximately 90% of sexual assault victims knew their perpetrator(s) prior to the assault (Fisher, 2000), 35% of assaults include physical force, and 79% of rapes are intra-racial (Fisher et al. 2003). Yet the persistence of stereotypical definitions of sexual assault have criminal-legal determinants. Eighty-nine percent of sexual assault cases reported to the police do not result in charges (Morabito et al., 2019), yet prosecutors are more likely to pursue charges in cases that involve a black male defendant and white female victim (Pokorak, 2006).
One major reform of the criminal-legal system has been the nationwide proliferation of medical forensic evidence collection programs, known as Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) exams. Corrigan’s (2013) study of SANE programs determined multiple avenues within which victims were exposed to state harm. RCC advocates in Corrigan’s study described requests by police for drug and alcohol testing of victims, which were then performed by medical personnel without victims’ knowledge or consent. SANE exams also provided legally irrelevant medical and sexual history to the police, later used to impeach the victim’s credibility in court. Similarly, Mulla’s (2014) study of SANE programs determined that forensic collection of evidence was prioritized over the desires and boundaries of victims.
RCCs
RCCs were first established during the second wave of feminism in the 1970s. They were often feminist grassroots collectives that rejected anti-feminist notions of bureaucracy and hierarchy in favor of community and collectivity (Maier, 2011; Reinelt, 1995). During the first formative years, RCCs were entirely volunteer-run, and volunteers would use their cars, homes, and telephones for supporting survivors and resource gathering (Bevacqua, 2000). These first collectives were outwardly opposed to the criminal-legal systems that had historically mistreated victims, drew public attention to the retraumatization of victims in the system, and called for reform of the criminal-legal response to rape (Maier, 2011; Martin, 2005). As anti-violence organizations began to expand, the need for funding to sustain the organizations developed. In many states, limited governmental funds were available for direct services, which could not be used for education or political purposes. This began to shape some centers’ organizational priorities toward victim services (Reinelt, 1995).
The establishment of RCCs in the 1970s occurred simultaneously to the proliferation of neoliberal capitalism in the United States. Neoliberalism is an ideology associated with the deregulation of markets, individualization, corporatization, and the displacement of public services onto private organizations (Bumiller, 2008; Gottschalk, 2015). Neoliberalism frames the understanding of oppression as individual psychopathy and rational choice, rather than caused by structural oppression (Stringer, 2014). The popularization of this economic approach fueled the political desire for budgetary austerity while reducing the belief in governmental responsibility for addressing social problems, including rape (Gottschalk, 2015).
The passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994 federally codified sexual assault as a criminal-legal issue and established federal funding to address the issue of sexual violence through the criminal-legal system (Bumiller, 2008). The VAWA funds made available to RCCs were tied to evidence-based governmental grants and associations with criminal-legal agencies (Bumiller, 2008; Maier, 2011). Mainstream RCCs, faced with austerity cuts of their funding for direct services, began trading-off their anti-establishment missions in an effort to qualify for the new criminal-legal funding streams (Beres, Crow, & Gotell, 2008; Corrigan, 2013b). Matthews’s (1994) study of RCCs found centers had accepted increased state oversight and reporting procedures to obtain financial stability. Scholars have connected such concessions to the depersonalization and disruption of the grassroots feminist nature of the RCC (Beres et al., 2008; Maier, 2011).
Scholarship on the effects of this institutionalization has found contemporary mainstream anti-violence movements are now aligned with neoliberal state logics. For example, Bumiller (2008) determines that RCC institutionalization has expanded coercive state surveillance over victims, Corrigan (2013b) points to RCCs’ adoption of the state’s individualized medicolegal and pathological solutions to rape, and Richie (2012) proposes anti-violence movements gained governmental legitimacy by adopting hierarchical bureaucratic organizational structures.
Contemporary RCCs provide a balance of victim services and prevention activism (Maier, 2011). Victim services typically include a hotline, free or discounted counseling, and assistance with formal institutions (Martin, 2005). Martin (2005) delineated that one guiding frame of RCCs is the belief of victims and acceptance of their accounts, which she found allows for less conflicted relations with victims than those seen within the criminal-legal system.
RCCs are still understood as social justice organizations. Many RCCs have adopted the intersectional feminist orientations utilized by other social justice organizations (Bierria, 2007). Intersectionality was born into social movements from black feminist thought. In her foundational discussion of the perspective, Crenshaw (1991) delineates the concepts of structural intersectionality and political intersectionality. Structural intersectionality encompasses the ways in anti-violence reforms must address the interlocking effects of structural oppression within an individuals’ social location (i.e., race, gender, class, sexuality), rather than focusing on a universal solution for all victims. Political intersectionality is the analysis of how conflicting political agendas within different social justice movements disempower and further marginalize those within subordinated groups. Politically intersectional solutions call for the dismantling of all interlocking structures of oppression in order to achieve liberation (Richie, 2012).
Carceral Feminism and RCCs
Carceral feminism, as first conceptualized by Bernstein (2010), refers to the turn of feminist organizations towards criminal-legal system to gain protection for some women, while claiming to represent all women. In contrast to intersectional feminism, carceral feminist agendas use of a rhetoric of ‘sameness’ in understanding violence (Price, 2012). Carceral feminist organizations ignore how their solutions to violence can create additional violences in marginalized victims’ lives and facilitate the racialized oppression of the carceral state (Whalley & Hackett, 2017). In favor of white women’s liberal gains, women of color, indigenous women, homeless women, and transwomen are dismissed (Davis, 1981; Deer, 2015; Spade, 2013).
The concept also illuminates the connections between neoliberalism, racial hierarchies, and the use of criminal-legal solutions for gender equality (Bernstein, 2010; Gottschalk, 2006). The second-wave feminist movement’s desire for criminal-legal protection from sexual assault aligned with the neoliberal desire for carceral expansion. Mainstream feminist demands for harsher punishments for sexual offenders “contributed to the symbolic message” of punitive crime control desired by conservative politicians (Bumiller, 2008, p. 7). For example, Bernstein (2010) argues that the utilization of anti-black tropes to stoke public enthusiasm for women’s criminal-legal protection echoes white slavery. Robinson (2000) connects such anti-black criminal stereotypes to neoliberalism in his analysis of the development of racialized capitalism. He argues the social understanding of the black man as the violent “caged beast” was used to block black communities from accessing capital during the rise of corporations and rationalization (p. 187). In this way, neoliberalism has fueled carceral expansion (Bumiller, 2008).
Carceral feminism is understood as being contradictory to intersectional feminisms (Whalley & Hackett, 2017). In Whittier’s (2016) study of the discourse used during congressional hearings on VAWA, she determined that while both carceral and intersectional feminisms were employed, the individualization of gender violence led to outcomes that were both carceral and noncarceral, but not intersectional.
Research suggests that despite their perception as social justice organizations, many state-funded RCCs utilize carceral feminism. In her study of the anti-rape movement, Bumiller (2008) found that while RCCs have remained generally intact, neoliberal state surveillance led to carceral appropriation of the anti-violence movement. Corrigan’s (2013) study of rape reform pointed to the inconsistency between RCCs’ belief in the state as a “benevolent protector” alongside criticisms of the state as a main cause of the oppression that causes sexual violence (p. 248). Some scholars view the push for harsher carceral solutions as replicating the causes of sexual abuse: dehumanization through oppression (Bumiller, 2008; Davis, 1981).
The carceral turn of RCCs also contains the racial hierarchies conceptualized in carceral feminism. Davis (1981) argued that since the carceral apparatus focuses disproportionately on policing black communities, anti-rape work that focuses exclusively on reported rape perpetuates racialized myths of rape: “As long as their analyses focus on accused rapists who are reported and arrested, black men—and other men of color—will inevitably be viewed as the villains responsible for the current epidemic of sexual violence” (p. 199).
Participation of RCCs on Sexual Assault Response Teams (SARTs) can also be interpreted as a product of carceral feminist practices. SARTs are comprised of key stakeholders in criminal-legal sexual assault response, usually including police, prosecutors, RCC advocates, and medical examiners (Zajac, 2006). The formalization of RCC and criminal-legal communications into SARTs followed the institutionalization of RCCs into state structures, suggesting that RCCs gained a literal seat at the table as a result of institutionalization. Research has found that the goals of SARTs include improved response to sexual assault, victim sensitivity, and increasing rates of reporting and conviction (Greenson & Campbell, 2011).
The varied perspectives brought to SARTs has caused them to be termed spaces of contestation (Moylan, Lindhorst, & Tajima, 2015). Moylan and Lindhorst’s (2015) study of conflict management within SARTs found RCC advocates were far more likely than other SART members to utilize strategies of resignation, wherein conflict would be avoided to maintain the SART. The maintenance of criminal-legal connection was also addressed in Martin’s (2005) study. She found that RCCs need to be useful to the state to ensure their inclusion in sexual assault response, citing the cost to victims when RCC referrals are not made. Martin asserts RCCs use a “occupy and indoctrinate” approach to influence the system from the inside (p. 102).
In her conceptualization of the carceral state, Gottshalk (2015) argued that the tenacity of carceral state has been bolstered by the increased involvement of institutions that have a financial dependency on the maintenance of the penal system. RCCs may now have become one of these vested interests. While scholarship has associated RCCs with the carceral state (Bumiller, 2008; Corrigan, 2013b), research has yet to establish the precise mechanisms of the carceral state that operate within some institutionalized RCCs. This project builds from such work to ethnographically illuminate several mechanisms of carceral expansion within one such RCC.
Method
Research Setting and Data Collection
This study utilizes institutional ethnographic data collected from 2012 to 2015 at a U.S. RCC, given the pseudonym Working to Eliminate Rape and Abuse (WERA). I began volunteering at WERA to increase the praxis within my research on sexual abuse. I found myself waiting with a victim in an emergency room for 5 hr, only to wait four more after we learned that the front desk had forgotten to call the SANE nurse. I sat outside interrogation rooms while the police asked a victim why they needed an advocate if they were telling the truth. I became interested in how these interventions shaped and were shaped by the cultural response to sexual assault, termed by Mulla (2014) the “institutional imaginaries of sexual violence” (p. 5).
Frontline workers have a unique ability to speak to institutional processes of gender and sexual violence. Wies and Haldane (2011) assert these workers have a distinct location within understanding gender violence. While a survivor may only have one story to tell, frontline workers have witnessed hundreds of such stories. As a result, “they are attuned to the ways shifts in policy affect the day-to-day decision-making of the very people such policy is intended to help” (p. 2). The specialized knowledge of frontline workers is thought to be crucial to prospect of reducing sexual and gender violence (Wies & Haldane, 2011).
I obtained permission to conduct research from multiple executive directors at WERA as well as the umbrella organization of the center. In accordance with my Institutional Review Board protocol, I obtained written consent for organizational observations as well as interviews. I repeatedly disclosed my position as a sociologist conducting research on the center with RCC management and advocates.
The ethnographic data collection of the current study is comprised of 3 years of fieldwork and 40 interviews with current or former WERA advocates or staff. I spent approximately 15 hr a week at WERA, lodging over 2,000 hr of participant observation. As a hotline volunteer and later volunteer supervisor, I engaged at the field site by answering calls on the 24/7 hotline, accompanying victims to the hospital, police station, or courthouse, and attending group meetings, team meetings, steering committee meetings, team-building activities, and outreach events. In addition to this ethnographic research, I conducted an analysis of WERA’s institutional archive, which included archival website data and print material provided by WERA. Such print material included training manuals, monthly newsletters, annual reports, and newspaper articles. Feminist scholarship has cited this type of mixed-method research as an advantage to the breadth of data collection, allowing for a view of institutional processes that cannot be ascertained by interviews alone (Westmarland & Bows, 2018).
Semistructured, in-depth interviews were conducted with RCC advocates and management. I recruited interviewees from all areas of the organization and across years of institutional history. I recruited for interviews by announcing my project at monthly meetings, and following up through e-mail. I used snowball sampling to find former volunteers and staff who had left WERA. This is a nonrandom method that focuses on recruiting participants who may be more disconnected from the organization. Interviews ranged from 35 min to 2.5 hr. Interviewees were asked about their experiences at the RCC, their perceptions of the organization, and their thoughts about sexual assault. Participants also provided demographic information. No incentive was provided. With the consent of interviewees, all interviews were digitally recorded.
The ethical considerations of this participant observatory method are important possible influences on the data. I began at WERA as a hotline volunteer, and after 6 months, I was given a supervisory role as a volunteer group leader. I provided advice and support in this role, but there was no assessment or incentive (financial, academic, or otherwise) within these relationships. I took precautions to minimize the impact of my role on the power dynamics of the interviews. Before I began interview collection, I stepped down as a supervisor, and shortly afterward I stopped my volunteer hours. Despite these safeguards, my previous position could have caused volunteers to be hesitant to criticize WERA.
Institutional Ethnographic Data Analysis
The interviews were transcribed either by the author or by a professional transcriber using a secure website. An institutional ethnographic method was used. First introduced by Smith, institutional ethnographic methods focus on examining power structures through the viewpoints of those within them (Smith, 2005). Westmarland and Bows (2018) view the advantage of feminist ethnography as centering participants as the experts of their experiences.
This article utilizes a writing style that combines description of institutional processes with excerpts from interviews, one of the main strategies of interview-based institutional ethnographic methods (Smith, 2005). All names of places or participants are pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality. I describe organizational positions in vague terms, as the small size of the organization makes this an important protection for the interviewees’ confidentiality.
I triangulated the data gathered in several ways. I matched the participants’ descriptions of their roles within their organization to records from the RCC. I also compared my field notes as well as the statements made within each of the interviews to my archival research of the center: through e-mails, meeting minutes, website archives, multiple editions of training manuals, organizational calendars, newspaper articles, and governmental reports.
The perspective of the top manager at WERA presented a negative case in this study. I interpret the contradictory explanations of this manager as reflective of the disconnect between the manager and volunteer advocates. For example, this manager highlighted the importance of volunteers to the organization in her interview, while none of the volunteer advocates or other staff interviewed perceived WERA as prioritizing volunteers. This exemplifies the many instances in which advocates’ views were at odds with this manager’s perspective. These negative case contradictions are a strength of the institutional ethnographic method, as they serve as a bottom-up reflection of the power within organizational frameworks.
Findings
Description of the Organizational Setting
WERA is a RCC within the Western United States. The center was located in a midsize university-centered city with a population of over 300,000. In 2015, more than 90% of city residents identified white, 13.7 as Latinx (category not mutually exclusive), 4.6% Asian American, and 1.2% black. The median household income was higher than that of the surrounding area (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).
When the collective that would become WERA was founded in the 1970s, volunteers trained themselves and began one of the first hotlines in the country. Over the next 40 years, WERA’s publicity materials emphasized the continuation of the all-volunteer 24/7 Spanish and English hotline as a marker of connection to the center’s origin. WERA’s services also included direct response services, termed “hot calls,” where advocates would go in person to support victims during hospital rape kit examinations, run interference between victims and police, and accompany victims to court. WERA also offered support groups, exercise meetups, and trauma-informed yoga. There was consistently a long waitlist for the on-site counselor.
There were six staff positions and approximately 30 active volunteers at WERA, with one or two counselors providing client services, an executive director (two during the duration of the study), and community outreach staff. The majority of those interviewed were volunteer advocates (n = 35). Ten WERA staff were interviewed (2 paid counselors and 8 administrators). Interviewees had been at WERA for an average of 2.7 years, ranging from 6 months to 15 years. I spoke to 37 women and three men, and the vast majority (n = 34) of participants were between 20 and 39 years old. Six were over the age of 40. Thirty of the respondents identified as white, seven Latinx, two black, and one as Asian American. Most respondents were no longer with the organization (n = 29), while 11 participants were still currently there.
Process of Criminal-Legal Institutionalization
State funding and social justice
WERA was founded as a part of a larger social movement against rape. Forty years after their establishment, WERA continued to identify as a social change organization aimed at eliminating sexual assault. In the 2000s, the name of the center changed from Local Rape Crisis Team to WERA, which was done to more fully convey the preventative and social justice orientation of the center.
Similar to other RCCs at the time, WERA’s original collective was run entirely by volunteers. By the mid-1990s, the organization had two staff members paid for by state funding, and a cadre of volunteer advocates. The restriction of funding faced by RCCs in the 1990s and 2000s stands in contrast to WERA’s eight paid staff positions in 2015. WERA’s organizational growth marks their institutionalization into state structures. The organization joined the local SART team, sending an employee to meet monthly with actors from the criminal-legal and medical institutions to review reports of sexual assault.
Consistent with research on modern RCCs, the vast majority of WERA’s funding was from state and federal grants. Nancy, a top manager, described the funding streams of WERA: So right now it's been the Victims of Crime Act, federal money, the Violence Against Women Act, federal money, the Victim Advocacy and Law Enforcement, state grant, and then really small kinda prevention grants, like the Tony grant is a State grant that comes up about youth education. So, federal, mainly, and then some State dollars. I think our large mission is to end sexual assault, but our bulk of our effort is about after the fact…some of the programs do try to be preventive and things like that but we’re tied to their money. We have to kinda do things the way that they do things.
Outsourcing of the hotline
In 2015, WERA management announced to the advocates that the hotline would be outsourced to the national rape crisis organization staffed by professional counselors. In lieu of hotline counseling, WERA’s local on-call volunteer advocates would now be notified by the national hotline counselor or law enforcement if in-person advocacy was needed at the hospital or police station. This conversion of client services transformed the reach of WERA’s advocacy from any sexual assault victim (who could get support on the hotline without reporting) to only those who chose to obtain direct services through the criminal-legal or medical institutions. Management gave various reasons for the switch, which changed from day to day and person to person. One volunteer advocate had the following speculation about why the switch occurred: Because it’s good for their budget [laughs]. I’ve heard that it is really good for their budget. Why do they need the switch? I don’t know…I volunteered 30 hours a month on the hotline for 4 years. For free. And I don’t want to hear about how it’s going to be better for your bottom line to not have me at all.
The rollout of this transition revealed a change in the organization from a bottom-up, volunteer-led hotline to a top-down staff-organized, direct-response service. Steve, who had been a volunteer supervisor at WERA for several years, had the following reflection on the lack of volunteer input into the decision. This ultimately caused him to leave RCC advocacy. I think it caused WERA to lose some of its identity as a volunteer-based organization, and led to more top-down decision-making rather than bottom-up through the volunteer pool…I think not allowing so much bottom-up decision-making knocks against the—it kind of knocks down the enthusiasm of volunteers, that they can’t be heard or be part of decision-making as much as they could at fully volunteer-focused organizations. I was constantly trying to look at ways that we could build community, and no one cared. No one would let me, and no one wanted to spend the time doing it. Everybody basically felt like the volunteers should just step in line and do whatever we tell them to do, that they’re disposable…. It’s awful. Volunteers are the backbone of WERA. They wouldn’t have a hotline without them. Well, they don’t have a hotline anymore.
The most consistent explanations of the conversion to criminal-legal victim services offered to advocates were financial security and a need to improve the relationship with local law enforcement. This aligns with scholarship that has documented RCCs’ determination to be helpful to the state to ensure inclusion (Martin, 2005), as well as the proliferation of neoliberal budgetary rationales in anti-violence organizations (Bumiller, 2008). These findings suggest that the neoliberalism at WERA can be extended to the RCC’s view of volunteers.
This change created immediate tensions with WERA’s organizational framing and mission. WERA’s mission statement was publicized as explicitly intersectional on their website in 2015. Advocate training materials also incorporated this framework: We know that the daily violence of racism/white supremacy, sexism/transphobia/ patriarchy, classism/capitalism, and homophobia/heterosexism are the intersecting sources of sexual violence, the reasons it happens.
The strain on organizational values was also evident within a switch in WERA’s view of the national sexual assault hotline. In 2014, before the conversion was announced, the national sexual assault hotline released a statement decrying the use of the term “rape culture” in anti-rape work (rape culture is a term used to bring attention to the ways in which the cultural treatment of sexual assault normalizes the behavior). The national organization asserted that rather than rape culture, rape needs to be understood as caused by a few violent individuals. In May 2015, WERA’s newsletter, which is created by staff and approved by WERA management, included a column from an intern who condemned the national organization, calling them a so-called victim advocacy organization. She countered that rape culture is central to RCCs themselves: “It is an oppressing and violent force that created the need for rape crisis centers and the anti-violence movement in the first place.” Her description of rape culture also utilized structural intersectionality: “Rape culture is more than simply misogyny; it is racism, heterosexism, nationalism, anti-Trans* hatred, and classism that oppress all individuals….” Given this, advocates described being in disbelief when the national organization was given the hotline. Multiple advocates described the conversion as a transference of values, and many left.
This conversion also had direct racial implications. In multiple interviews, WERA management listed communities of color as crucial to the expansion of WERA’s services. The outsourcing of the hotline effectively eliminated hotline services for Spanish speakers. While the national hotline outsourced to has since been given a federal grant to fund Spanish-language service on their hotline, this was not the case when the conversion was announced in 2015.
Direct-service provision immediately increased the frequency of WERA advocacy within the criminal-legal and medical systems. According to organizational reports, hospital and law enforcement advocacy increased sharply from 9 visits in 2015 to 54 visits in 2016. Nancy reported that she saw a change in the relationship with the police as a result of the switch. She asserted that years ago, WERA advocates were seen by law enforcement as interfering with investigations, but now perceived respect and collaboration between the systems: I feel like we’re working together, there’s conversation there’s respect. When there’s issues, I feel like we follow up. It just feels healthy to me. I saw that as really being a priority, how can we get the police to respect us and to trust us and communicate with us. And for us to start working more as a team rather than completely separately or as if we’re in opposition to each other.
Relegation Within the Criminal-Legal System
Most advocates and staff did not believe that the increased proximity to the criminal-legal system had improved the respect given to WERA’s perspective and cited an array of instances of disrespect they experienced from the police during hot calls. Mya, who worked for over 5 years at WERA in a staff advocate position, assessed the influence of WERA in her description of her experiences within SART meetings. Similar to research on SARTs nationwide, this SART was comprised of a coalition of district attorneys (DAs), law enforcement, and local victim advocacy centers. While the group theoretically creates more space for WERA to shape criminal-legal perspectives cases, Mya was skeptical that WERA had any impact.
I mean, it didn’t do anything we just talked about it and nothing happened, nothing changed. What would change have looked like do you think? I don’t know. I feel like maybe people changing a little bit how they thought about things. Like DAs may be looking at cases a little differently. Or like detectives maybe thinking about more trauma-informed ways they could’ve handled speaking with survivors. But it was like—I felt everybody was just so in their own little world and was not really willing to look outside of that or listen to anybody else. So, it was kind of, I mean, it really just did nothing.
Mya’s statement on the lack of reception of WERA’s ideas led her to believe that the collaboration was ineffective in practice. She viewed the other SART members as unwilling to take advice on improving the criminal-legal process for victims.
Amy, who had been a volunteer advocate for 4 years, provided further insight into how WERA was viewed by the police. After 3 days of interviewing a homeless rape victim, a police officer contacted WERA, hoping that the center could find a place for her to go. Amy went to the police station to meet the victim and recalled her frustration: I remember part of what was so fucked up is it was like they knew WERA existed but they chose to utilize us only when convenient. Instead of having someone there to support her the whole time. Which was telling, I think…I got there, he had her in a like an interview room, where you interview suspects. And so she was like on the close cam, and he was like, “That’s her.” And I was like, “That’s creepy as fuck. Turn that off. Why do you have that on right now?”…I think that he called out of convenience and wanting to be done with the weekend stuff.
The question of increased referrals was further addressed by an advocate who worked for both WERA and the criminal-legal system. After her role at WERA, Mya took a job at the local district courthouse as an advocate. She was surprised to discover that few of the victims who were pursuing charges used WERA’s services. She reflected in her interview that she now viewed the usefulness of WERA as dependent on the victim’s experience with law enforcement. I think WERA is a resource if people are unhappy, and the DA’s office is like, “Oh contact WERA, don’t tell us about it.” Or they feel like they need additional support because they haven’t been supported so far. That’s my theory.
Taken together, Mya and Amy’s experiences exemplify advocates’ descriptions of WERA being turned to when victims were percieved as a nuisance for the state or when victims were unhappy with their experience in the system. Law enforcement used WERA to pacify victims, while refusing to engage WERA’s expertise. These findings suggest that the center was brought in on a case-by-case basis to smooth over the deficiencies and issues of the criminal-legal process. While RCCs have historically advocated for victims as they navigate the criminal-legal process, WERA advocacy was used in the aftermath of this process. This illustrates the “switch” that occurred after WERA’s institutionalization: Instead of increased respect, the center’s perspective was ignored. Further, once inside the system, WERA changed from providing a service for victims to providing a service for criminal-legal institutions.
Sexual Assault Net Widening
WERA’s entanglement with criminal-legal system bore witness to a carceral net widening. WERA’s relegated status and the expanded criminalization of victims was illustrated within medical- and criminal-legal institutions, both of which favored the agenda of the state over WERA’s expertise. Sarah, a volunteer advocate, described her experience meeting a victim, Stacy, at the hospital for a rape kit (called a sexual assault nurse examination or SANE): We used to go to this hospital that provided SANE exams in Easton, and a lot of their staff were not familiar with the fact that survivors don’t have to report in order to get a SANE exam. So there was a problem with that where I was trying to advocate for her, but I was being told no that’s not possible and so she got really scared while we were there because she was being told [she would have to report]. She was like “what you betrayed me, these people are telling me something different than what you told me,” and then the SANE nurse tells the police that there is a kit happening. I had to ask them, “can you wait until after we leave to say this?” but she wouldn’t. And then of course the police are like “is this Stacy, we know, we’re looking for her, and what your describing sounds her so we’re just coming.” And then the police are on their way, and so she flees.
The decision for the police to utilize the SANE exam as a route of access to the victim signals a net widening, expanding the avenues by which the carceral state can locate criminal subjects. This signals another iteration of the sexual assault bait and switch: Rather than increased ability to insulate victims from harm within the criminal-legal system, the center’s relegated status dismissed WERA’s advocacy, which allowed the carceral state to execute warrants in a new location, such as a SANE exam room.
Net widening also occurred within formal meetings between WERA and law enforcement. The prosecutorial decisions discussed at SART meetings were not limited to those accused of sexual assault but also included victims who were thought to have filed a false report. This placed WERA at the table during the criminalization of their clients, with little influence. Mya gave an account of a SART meeting she attended while she was still working at WERA. She engaged with the police over false reporting charges for a victim she had been helping: I feel like the main thing the DA’s office operates from in situations like that (suspected false reporting) is the amount of resources that were spent by like police departments. And then, when they feel like it didn’t happen it’s like, “Look at all these resources that were wasted.” And so they need to make up for it by holding someone accountable for that.…Detective Smith was very—he was pissed. He’s like, “We spent a lot of resources and time on this.”…And so nothing was decided at that meeting. It was basically just the DA’s office being like, “We really feel like she needs to be charged” and us being like, “We really need to not charge her.” And then I think—then we got cut out of meetings.
As the debate over charging this victim continued to unfold, Mya received a call from WERA leadership. She recounted this conversation in her interview. Nancy had been consulting with the DA’s office, I had been working with the client. Nancy calls me one day and is like, “Hey, what do you think about this case? Do you think it happened?” And I was like, “I do think it happened.” You know, her level of trauma, what she said…I mean, aren’t we fucking supposed to believe people for one thing? But I did believe her, regardless of just believing people as a practice, I believed her. So Nancy let me go on about why I believed her and what I felt like lined up and all this stuff, and then she was like, “Well, I don’t think that it actually happened. I agree with the DA’s office.”
Mya expressed that Nancy’s questioning of the victim’s story was in and of itself against organizational practices. At WERA, the importance of victim belief was emphasized throughout organizational materials and hotline trainings. Yet in this case, Nancy aligned her belief with the DA. This signals a change of frame within upper WERA management toward criminal-legal perceptions of victim credibility. This locates the final bait and switch within the organization. Where RCC institutionalization offered the opportunity to reform the treatment of victims within the criminal-legal system, at WERA this had the opposite effect.
Discussion and Implications
The current study provides insight into the expansion of the carceral state within one U.S. RCC. Through ethnographic research and interviews, advocates and management illustrated the ways in which the RCC’s transition into the criminal-legal system compromised the center’s mission, values, volunteers, and clients. In this analysis, I demonstrate a modern sexual assault bait and switch in the context of WERA. WERA’s management’s concerns about financial security and desire for increased criminal-legal influence converted the RCC into a state service. Conversion expanded the ability for the state to acquire control over WERA, marginalize their advocacy, transform the center to serve criminal-legal needs, and utilize forms of net widening.
This article has highlighted multiple implications of institutionalization at one RCC. The rise of neoliberalism in the United States brought governmental cuts of social services, threatening the funding for RCCs nationwide. In response, WERA began to adopt neoliberal ideologies within the center, which alienated the volunteers at the core of RCCs’ original collectives. WERA’s transformation into a top-down organizational structure, management’s use of cost–benefit logic, and service orientation toward criminal-legal systems exemplifies the inherent links between market-based economic solutions and carceral strategies.
In addition, WERA’s stated awareness of the cultural and historical barriers for victims of color was oppositional to the direction of their institutionalization into the criminal-legal system. While displaying a structurally intersectional mission statement, WERA failed to examine the importance of political intersectionality within organizational anti-rape efforts. As a result, the racial oppression of the carceral state expanded into the center. This occurred through both the enlistment of criminal-legal solutions as well as the limiting of services to victims in the criminal-legal system. As Davis (1981) noted, focusing exclusively on reported rape enlists the racial hierarchies within the carceral state. Integration also altered the center’s structurally intersectional orientation, as seen in the temporary elimination of the Spanish hotline. These findings are consistent with Whitter’s (2016) VAWA study. When intersectional and carceral feminisms collide within the state, the results are inevitably more carceral than intersectional.
Institutionalization gave many RCCs a seat at the criminal-legal table. However, WERA’s subordinate position within this collaboration resulted in the domination of carceral agendas. This draws into question RCCs’ use of compromise in order to stay in communication with the criminal-legal system. Where Martin (2005) found RCCs realized that becoming helpful to the criminal-legal system aided victims, my findings suggest the opposite at WERA: that becoming helpful to the system helped the system, while exposing victims to the carceral state.
The draw of the carceral state baited WERA with the possibility of an improved relationship with the criminal-legal system and then situated the center as the handler for upset or unnecessary victims after the fact. Rather than incorporating WERA’s perspective to prevent “the second rape” (Madigan & Gamble, 1991), as was offered at the SART meetings and the hospital, law enforcement turned to WERA only after retraumatization has occurred. Routing the most upset or “difficult” victims through WERA rendered the center a service within the carceral state. These findings suggest that the rationalization of state integration based on the desire for increased referrals, put forth by Martin (2005), should include an examination of the context of such referrals: At what stage in the process are RCC referrals made and for what purpose? These results also expand Corrigan’s (2013b) determination that RCC integration did not influence criminal-legal conceptions of sexual assault, as RCCs had hoped. While Corrigan traced this lack of success to legislation that failed to incorporate feminist views of rape, the case of WERA adds an organizational understanding to the reasons for this failed influence.
The reach of the carceral state into WERA’s advocacy displayed a process of sexual assault net widening, where RCC clients are vulnerable to criminalization by the state. Advocates described WERA’s inability to affect the carceral mechanism in meetings and during SANE exams, and provided examples of management being influenced by the system, rather than doing the influencing. These findings extend Corrigan’s (2013a) illustration of SANE exams as a mechanism for law enforcement’s impeachment of victims. In the case of WERA, locations of institutional overlap were sometimes used to diminish the credibility of, or criminalize, rape victims. In addition, Mulla’s (2014) study of SANE exams found hospital staff had become legal arbitrators of the state. At WERA, RCC management took on a similar role for the state.
Bumiller (2008) and Corrigan (2013b) found that the move toward carceral sexual assault solutions perpetuates the dehumanization that exists at the core of sexual abuse. WERA’s training materials draw an explicit organizational connection between other systems of violence and sexual abuse, including racism and white supremacy. Through institutionalization, WERA aligned with the very conditions it cites as causing sexual assault.
RCCs could benefit from regular evaluations of how their organizational missions align with their policies and practices. These evaluations should include stakeholders from the communities served by the center, RCC staff, and volunteers. As continued representatives of the anti-rape movement, RCCs must evaluate if their organization is occupying the space of a social movement while marginalizing the possibilities for social change.
Limitations
WERA is not representative of all U.S. RCCs and provides an illustration of institutionalization of sexual assault response within only one RCC. These findings are also limited by a lack of data from management around the reasons for transformation of the organization. WERA management’s distancing of volunteers and staff from organizational processes obscured the decision-making processes regarding the outsourcing of the hotline. Another limitation of this data is the lack of racial diversity in WERA’s service provision. Given the racial demographics of the area, these findings cannot address the impact of WERA’s policies on service provision to victims of color. Research is needed on how RCCs that serve communities of color navigate their relationship with the criminal-legal system.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I am deeply appreciative for the RCC advocates within this study. I also want to thank my colleagues, the anonymous reviewers, and the editors for their contributions to the development of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences at the University of Colorado.
