"Significant Bodily Intrusions": Investigations into Law Enforcement Phlebotomy
Anne Johnson · 2025
This three-paper dissertation explores law enforcement phlebotomy, the ability of law enforcement officers to draw blood. Phlebotomy is both a ubiquitous, invasive diagnostic tool as well as a social site with complex relational dynamics at play between phlebotomist and patient. Through law enforcement phlebotomy, the blood draw is co-opted from the medical field into the policing field, and the normative framework through which it is used changes: whereas medical edicts instruct providers to work with patients through an ethics of care--respecting consent and refusal--policing is not similarly bound, instead operating through a prioritization of security and efficiency. In the articles that follow, I establish sociological inquiry into law enforcement phlebotomy through a theoretical analysis of law enforcement phlebotomy and the creation of the patient/suspect; a semi-structured, in-depth interview study with police phlebotomists to understand the logics employed to justify, defend, and critique police use of phlebotomy; and a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of newspaper coverage of this policing practice.