Negotiating Heterogeneous Logics: A Challenge for Criminal Justice Programs with Social Welfare Objectives

• In Event: 082 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session I
  In Refereed Roundtable: A. Table 02. Criminology/Deviance

Abstract

Hybrid criminal justice and social welfare programs are part of a shift in the criminal justice system’s role in health and social service provision and coordination that has drawn an array of criticisms regarding the extent to which the criminal justice system should engage in such a role and how this role should be carried out in this context. Alongside these broad criticisms, scholars have begun to explore how these programs carry out these competing roles. Building on this literature, I focus attention on how the hybrid organizational structure can enable and constrain certain types of health and social service practices. Through an in-depth case study of 286 independent cases of collaborative deliberations of staff members of a hybrid criminal justice and social welfare programs, I emphasize in particular how efforts are narrowed towards practices in which all organizational actors have a stake and the resources to engage. This results in health and social service provision that is routinely constrained towards regulatory action.

Author

• Cheyney Cooper Dobson, University of Michigan