Assembled and Forgotten:
The Making of the Rape Kit Backlog
(In Progress)
Media scrutiny has recently fallen on the hundreds of thousands of untested forensic rape kits sitting in police storage facilities and forensic labs across the United States. This media attention has sparked public controversies over the value, necessity, and credibility of forensic evidence in sexual assault cases. This project traces the history of the rape kit backlogs in the United States. Situated in theoretical literatures of the social construction of technology and feminist technoscience studies, this SSHRC-funded study takes up theoretical questions about state responses to gendered violence, technological surveillance, scientific expertise, and the tenuous credibility of forensic technologies.