Internalized Change or Forced Coercion

• In Event: 30662 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 6: Criminal Legal System/ Actors/ Processes

Abstract

This paper explores how rehabilitation and behavioral change is framed in dependency court and the family reunification process. Utilizing institutional ethnography, over 200 hours of courtroom observations, and semi-structured interviews with key informants, this work looks to understand better how parents experience and respond to institutional expectations of compliance, alignment, and progress during child welfare interventions and family reunification. Rather than explicitly using the term rehabilitation, courts and the guiding child welfare framework emphasize the necessity for parents to demonstrate an internalized motivational change. This framing highlights the intersection of language, compliance, and institutional power, shaping parental experiences within the child welfare system. The analyses focus on three key aspects including how behavioral change and rehabilitation are embedded in the court’s discourse and procedures, the pressure on parents to prove progress, and the role of language as a therapeutic tool and measure of compliance. While professionals recognize rehabilitation as the broader objective, behavioral change serves as a measurable indicator of progress. Parents must not only meet institutional benchmarks but also demonstrate an internalized desire for transformation. Parents must prove their progress through compliance with their case plans. Compliance is framed as both a requirement and a measure of alignment with court expectations, where success brings rewards, and failure results in punitive consequences. Lastly, language as a therapeutic tool and measure of compliance is explored. Judges and child welfare agents employ selective discourse to encourage behavioral change, but this language also reinforces power dynamics, making parental success contingent on alignment with institutional norms. Additionally, courtroom language can serve punitive functions, challenging notions of fairness within therapeutic jurisprudence and procedural justice. By examining these dynamics, this paper contributes to broader discussions on rehabilitation, institutional control, and the structural constraints that many low-income and already marginalized families face within the child welfare system.

Author

• Mary Elizabeth Underwood Hood, University of Nevada-Las Vegas