This project investigates the history and current practices of the United States medical examiner/coroner system. The work reveals how the entanglement of law enforcement, forensic pathology, and ethical nihilism produce forms of state violence and biomedical racism that target communities of color who are killed while in police custody in the streets and in carceral institutions throughout the United States. The collaborative dimension of this work involves a public facing data science project done in partnership with local community organizations, ISG faculty Nicholas Shapiro’s Carceral Ecologies Lab, and ISG faculty Terence Keel‘s BioCritical Studies Lab.
This work also serves as the basis of Keel’s forthcoming single-authored book, Society after Nihilism: The Medicolegal Erasure of Accountability at the end of American Life.