“There’s really no risk of injury”: News coverage of law enforcement phlebotomy & the discursive power of the police perspective

Abstract

In at least 17 states, police draw blood from motorists they suspect of impaired driving. While law enforcement phlebotomy has largely gone unexamined outside of legal scholarship, newspapers around the United States have occasionally covered this burgeoning practice. I employ Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to answer the question: How have local and national newspapers in the United States portrayed law enforcement phlebotomy programs since their creation in 1995? As newspapers plays a pivotal role in communicating hegemonic discursivities to the news-reading public, this study offers insight into the discourse surrounding law enforcement phlebotomy. Through a Foucauldian lens, I find two competing discursive frames for understanding law enforcement phlebotomy: the first discursive frame, the police perspective, justifies law enforcement phlebotomy through a prioritization of governmental ideals, namely public security and increased police efficiency. The second discursive frame counters the police perspective by highlighting the risk of harm to suspects when police draw blood. The unanimously positive police discursive frame of law enforcement phlebotomy is ever-present throughout the sample, and represents discursive discipline in action.