Pathology Logics

Abstract

Every year thousands of marginalized parents become entangled in the family regulation system, an apparatus more commonly referred to as the "child welfare system". Against the backdrop of demands to abolish the police, directly impacted parents, activists, and scholars highlight the shared carceral logic of the family regulation and criminal legal system. Their demands caution that merely tinkering with one aspect of carcerality will not achieve the larger goals of abolition, or what Mariame Kaba describes as "a vision of a restructured society". In prior work, I examine how the coercion of domestic violence survivors in the family regulation system functions as a self-legitimizing tool and perpetuates harmful knowledge. This piece focuses on another logic deeply embedded in the system: the pathologizing of impoverished and racialized groups. Scholars have discussed the pathologizing of marginalized groups to describe several different phenomena. Here "pathology logic" refers to the institutional logic that produces notions of individual responsibility, renders the structural conditions of poverty and racism invisible, and obscures resistance. Three key elements contribute to this logic in the family regulation context. One, the policing of emotions by family regulation actors through ostensibly neutral behavioral descriptors. Two, the coercion of mental health evaluations and treatment that produce a formal clinical label. Three, the exacerbation and exploitation of emotional distress linked to family regulation intervention. The pathology label legitimizes intrusive state intervention into marginalized families' lives and reifies the subjugation of their experiences.

This piece makes three significant contributions to the ongoing debate over the family regulation system's role in carceral abolition. First, it provides a definition of the substance and scope of pathology logics in "child welfare". Next, it examines the procedural and institutional drivers of pathology logics. Finally, this article traces the language of pathology logics by showing how ostensibly neutral behavioral descriptors police emotions and label marginalized families "deficient". Pathology logics distract from the structures that render families in marginalized communities hyper-visible to the state, conceal the interconnectedness of carceral systems, obscure the destabilizing effects of poverty and racism, and erase the expertise of directly impacted families by equating resistance and pathology. Pathology constructs "via racist, gendered, and classist norms" who is and who is not "capable" of parenting without state intervention. Instead of centering incremental reform, this article highlights ways of shifting power.

Keywords: Family Law, Family Regulation, Child Welfare, Poverty Law, Carceral Studies, Abolition, Race and the Law, Gender and the Law

JEL Classification: K40: Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior