Values in Criminal Justice Policy, Values in Our Research

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

This panel is focused on the importance of values, both in our research processes and in policies and practices that impact criminalized people. These two topics are not as separate as they may seem, for if values are as important as these papers will demonstrate in shaping what policy-makers and frontline workers do, then they cannot be absent from our research projects which seek to unveil workings of the penal state in its various forms. Our papers together ask the following questions: Who has values? What overt or hidden values have motivated criminal justice policies, from longstanding arrangements with the civic sector to recent prison reform? What do we need to understand about values to form a robust public criminology, against the myth of value-free social science? Where is our greatest potential in minimizing human suffering as social scientists concerned with the criminal justice system?

Sub Unit

• Area VII. Criminal Justice Policy and Practice / 32. Considering Criminal Justice Policies

Individual Presentations

• The Public Sector Death Knell: Consequences of Fiscal Austerity Prison Reform - Sarah Cate, University of Southern Mississippi

• Danish Punishment and the “Law of Jante” - Lori Sexton, University of Missouri-Kansas City; Jennifer Sumner, California State University Dominguez Hills; Keramet Reiter, University of California, Irvine

• Church-State Partnerships Promoting Drug and Alcohol Treatment: The Role of Values - Nicole Kaufman, Ohio University

• Toward a Public Criminology - Jay Borchert, University of Michigan

Chair

• Nicole Kaufman, Ohio University

Discussant

• Michelle Phelps, University of Minnesota