The Micro-Politics of Institutional Bricolage: Gatekeeping and Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Mental Health Courts

• In Event: 573 - Section on Sociology of Mental Health Paper Session. Law, Crime and Mental Illness

Abstract

This study examines how Mental Health Court (MHC) staff decide which defendants to admit. Our analysis of this gatekeeping process is informed by research on the micro-politics of trouble and by more recent work on institutional logics—understood as the symbolic and material organizing principles of institutions. Much has been written on how organizations react to environments marked by competing institutional logics, yet we know relatively little about how individuals in those organizations navigate between different institutional logics, a process that has been called bricolage. As an institutional hybrid, Mental Health Courts bring together the institutional logics of the criminal justice and mental health care systems—without providing a template for how to achieve the organization’s goals. Our analysis sheds light on how court professionals achieve organizational goals by creatively expanding, combining and transforming practices and symbols in light of the constraints and resources—both material and symbolic—afforded by the hybrid institutional environment. While the manifest goal of MHCs is to divert mentally ill defendants out of the criminal justice system and into successful treatment, from an institutional perspective the establishment of a mental health court creates a set of organizational goals, primary among which is to maintain the court’s legitimacy by ensuring program success and avoiding undesirable outcomes. The client selection process, we show, is intimately connected to the goal of maintaining organizational legitimacy. Implications for institutional theory and research on mental health courts are discussed.

Authors

• Ursula Castellano, Ohio University

• Josh Guetzkow, Hebrew University