Carceral lock-in: How organizational conditions stymie the development of justice alternatives in a rape crisis center

Abstract

Many perpetrators of sexual violence are themselves victims of similar crimes. Such “complex victims” do not fit neatly into the dichotomous categories of victim and perpetrator essential to the functioning of the adversarial criminal-legal system. How anti-rape activists attempt to incorporate complex victims into their work illustrates challenges they experience when wrestling with the carceral state more broadly. In this article, I draw on 32 months of participant observation and 40 in-depth interviews to show how organizational conditions—departmental silos and physical infrastructure—prevent activists’ treatment of complex victims. Building on the concept of path dependence from organization theory, I argue that carceral understandings of harm become “locked-in” despite activists’ anti-carceral attitudes. This article identifies barriers to the treatment of complex victims, further explains feminist activists’ simultaneously contentious and coalitional relationship with the carceral state, and introduces the concept of carceral lock-in to help understand impediments to justice alternatives.