Controlling Reproduction and Disrupting Family Formation: California Women’s Prisons and the Violent Legacy of Eugenics

Vrindavani Avila and Jennifer Elyse James ()
Additional contact information
Vrindavani Avila: Cultural Studies Graduate Group, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
Jennifer Elyse James: Institute for Health and Aging, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA

Societies, 2024, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: Prisons in the United States serve as a site and embodiment of gendered and racialized state violence. The US incarcerates more people than any other nation in both numbers and per capita rates. Individuals incarcerated in women’s prisons are 10% of the total prison population, yet women’s prisons remain understudied, and the violence that occurs in women’s facilities is rampant, widespread, and operates in particular racialized and gendered ways. This paper centers the forced sterilizations that occurred in California state prisons over the last two decades. We consider how reproduction and the nuclear family have served as a primary site of racial capitalism and eugenic ideology. While eugenic policies were popularized and promoted across the US and globally in the 20th century, the violent ideas underlying eugenic ideology have been a constant presence throughout US history. The height of the eugenics era is marked by the forcible sterilization of institutionalized ‘deviant’ bodies. While discussions of eugenics often center these programs, the reach of eugenic policies extends far beyond surgical interventions. We utilize a reproductive justice lens to argue that the hierarchical, racialized social stratification necessary for the existence of prisons constructs and sustains the ‘deviant’ bodies and families that predicate eugenic logic, policies, and practices. In this conceptual paper, we draw from ongoing research to argue that prisons, as institutions and as a product of racial capitalism, perpetuate the ongoing violent legacy of eugenics and name abolition as a central component of the fight to end reproductive oppression.

Keywords: incarceration; eugenics; racial capitalism; state violence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/14/5/73/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/14/5/73/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:14:y:2024:i:5:p:73-:d:1397450

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().