Subverting Reform: Juvenile Justice Correctional Agents and the Implementation of California’s Senate Bill 823

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 27: Frontline Service Work

Abstract

Senate Bill 823 for Juvenile Justice Realignment (2020) transformed California’s juvenile justice system by closing state-run youth prisons and shifting all juvenile responsibilities to county governments. SB 823, one of California’s most progressive penal reforms to date, signals a statewide effort toward juvenile decarceration and community-based youth justice. Progressive reforms like SB 823 are often promoted as transformative shifts away from a punitive system. Yet research across multiple disciplines reveals that reforms rarely unfold as written, frequently diverge from their legislative intents, and are routinely reshaped by bureaucrats tasked with carrying them out. Empirical research on the implementation of decarceration-focused initiatives remains scarce, particularly within juvenile justice contexts. This mixed-methods study combines ethnography, in-depth interviewing, and survey data to examine the role of frontline correctional bureaucrats in SB 823’s implementation process. Four years of enactive ethnography were conducted at a county juvenile detention facility in Southern California. To supplement the ethnographic data, 25 in-depth interviews were conducted with facility staff about their views on the policy, in addition to the administration of an agency-wide survey. My investigation reveals significant resistance among correctional bureaucrats to the policy itself and the broader philosophical shift in juvenile justice it represents—from a punitive approach to a health- and community-centered model for youth justice. I show that correctional staff undermine the policy through three primary mechanisms: 1) their early retirements and resignations from the agency under study; 2) their subversion of service provision to realigned youth; and 3) their enablement of realigned youths’ misconduct and ‘criminality.’ I argue that this subversion of SB 823 results in the reproduction of the punitive incarceration conditions that the policy was meant to eradicate, and of the very behaviors that opponents of progressive penal policies cite to advocate for more punitive approaches.

Author

• Jaqueline Lepe, University of California-Berkeley