Discourses of Mass Probation: From Managing Risk to Reforming Punishment in Michigan

• In Event: 478 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Paper Session. Criminal Justice Contact and Inequality

Abstract

One of the most important contributions of punishment and society scholars has been the rich debate over whether we have entered a distinctive “post-modern” era of punishment, and more recently, whether the downsizing of prisons represents a new phase of penal development. Much of this work focused on growth in imprisonment, yet nearly 60 percent of the supervised population in the U.S. is under probation supervision in their home communities. This article considers this transformation through the lens of mass probation, using a historical case study of one state (Michigan) from the 1970s to the early 2010s to understand how the discourses and practices of probation shifted during late modernity. The results show that discourses of risk, probation as “tough” punishment, and cost-effectiveness emerged in the 1970s as a way to stave off the coming punitive turn. The department succeeded at establishing probation as a successful alternative to imprisonment for “low-risk” felons, but ironically this “diversion,” provided the mechanism for the rapid expansion in sentence lengths for “high-risk” cases that propelled mass incarceration . Today, risk and cost discourses are again central as the state works to reduce prison populations by addressing probation (and parole) revocation. I argue that rather than a hand-maiden of neoliberalism, risk represents a surprisingly flexible governance discourse that is constructed to fit each crisis du jure.

Author

• Michelle S. Phelps, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities