Criminal Justice Involvement as Disruption

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

Although criminal justice involvement is often aptly described as a “cycle” – from arrest and detainment through release, recidivism, and re-arrest – it is also heavily characterized by disruption. Being jailed, even briefly, can interrupt education, employment, housing, and family life. Being convicted and imprisoned further affects ties to kin and communities, leading to new patterns of communication and self-reliance, which in turn are disrupted by re-entry and reunion. Having a criminal record disqualifies individuals from various government entitlements, housing, and employment opportunities, a form of disruption that reverberates in family relationships and efforts towards economic stabilization. In this session, three papers will engage the concept of “criminal justice involvement as disruption,” exploring such issues as the paradoxical forms of assistance and equilibrium that may be conferred by incarceration; re-entry as a dislocating process during which people must contend with a form of “ruptured citizenship”; and the psychosocial consequences of repeated disempowerment through the disruption of agency and action.

Sub Unit

• Area VII: Criminal Justice Policy and Practice / 36: Causes and Consequences of Mass Incarceration

Individual Presentations

• Getting “Rescued”: Arrest and Imprisonment as a ‘Positive Disruption’ - Holly Pelvin, University of Toronto

• The Dangers of Disruption: A Social Worker’s Notes on Jails, (Slow) Death, and Institutional Cycling - Reuben J. Miller, University of Michigan; Elizabeth Kita, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Division of Adult Parole Operations

• A State of Disruption: Crime Control, Social Welfare Policy, and the Construction of “Carceral Citizenship" - Reuben J. Miller, University of Michigan

Chair

• Reuben J. Miller, University of Michigan