Risky Interactions: A Communicative Analysis of Penal Practice

• In Event: Institutional Corrections: Policies and Practices

Abstract

Using original as well as secondary data, this paper elaborates and employs an interpretive-interactionist framework for considering the workings of penal institutions. This framework aims to draw attention to the ways in which penal practitioners draw on and articulate institutional logics that conceive of various penal measures (e.g. arrests, court directives, probation interviews) as opening-up spaces for interaction whereby institutional knowledge about individuals is generated and consequently put into circulation. The important point here is that practitioners understand such measures not only as immediately promoting material goals but also as opportunities for symbolic interaction, namely as concerning matters to have their primary importance not only in their own right but as conventionalized means of communication. Among other things, this framework seems to challenge conventional assumptions regarding how knowledge about individuals (such as one’s risk levels) is determined in practice. Indeed, my observations demonstrate that the situational factors within which decisions are made matter at least as much as static variables such as criminal record or employment status. This, in turn, may provide us with further analytical purchase on the ways in which mundane-yet-weighty decisions could be influenced by cultural frames that may reflect asymmetries of power within the social domain.

Author

• Gil Rothschild Elyassi, University of California, Berkeley