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"I knew it was COVID; I knew i was on probation": the impact of the carceral state on black women's disaster experiences
Date
2024
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Individuals under community supervision face compounded vulnerability during disasters as they are responsible for taking care of their own needs while simultaneously negotiating the fulfillment of their supervision conditions – a violation of which can result in severe consequences. Black women under community supervision are particularly vulnerable in this regard. Criminal legal involvement reinforces narratives of Black womanhood embedded into the racial commonsense of the U.S. Grounded in Black feminist thought, intersectionality, and critical race feminism, this study employs qualitative interviews, collaborative analytic sessions, and arts-based activism with 32 Black women under community supervision during COVID-19. Findings reveal that the surveillance and criminalization of community supervision hindered Black women’s ability to respond to the pandemic. Black women were still expected to fulfill the conditions of their supervision under the constant threat of the boogieman, a reminder of their precarious existence. Yet, Black women resisted, reclaimed, and renamed themselves, exercising individual and collective agency within their families and communities. This study extends the scholarship on the racial and gendered impact of the carceral state, the phenomenological experience of Black women, and the intersection of disasters and the criminal legal system.
Description
Keywords
Community supervision, Criminal justice, Disasters, Gender, Race