Community Practitioners in Criminal Courts: Risk Logics and Multiply-Disadvantaged Individuals
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| Author | Marianne Quirouette |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480617707951 |
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617707951
Theoretical Criminology
2018, Vol. 22(4) 582 –602
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480617707951
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Community Practitioners in
Criminal Courts: Risk Logics
and Multiply-Disadvantaged
Individuals
Marianne Quirouette
University of Toronto, Canada
Abstract
The role community practitioners play in lower criminal courts has traditionally been
overlooked in the socio-legal literature. In this article, I analyse how they use discretion
and contribute to courts’ knowledge about and understanding of the problems clients
(the accused) face. I focus on how they manoeuvre the courts, offering supports, service
or housing; ‘vouching’ for or documenting progress, good character, compliance and
potential; or educating judicial actors about social context, or therapeutic perspectives
around mental health, substance use or trauma. I advance understandings of how non-
justice actors interpret and use risk logics, while contributing medical, cultural and
sociological knowledge that can improve practices in lower criminal courts, particularly
by destabilizing assumptions about criminogenic risk management, poverty and choice.
Keywords
Community corrections, complex risk/need, criminal courts, discretion, service
providers
Even if criminal justice support is not part of their official mandate, community practi-
tioners often work with people who are criminalized, focusing on need related to home-
lessness, substance misuse and unemployment, factors which weigh heavily in assessments
Corresponding author:
Marianne Quirouette, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina,
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2J4, Canada.
Email: marianne.quirouette@mail.utoronto.ca
707951TCR0010.1177/1362480617707951Theoretical CriminologyQuirouette
research-article2017
Article
Quirouette 583
of risk related to recidivism and to judicial decisions generally. They engage with police,
court actors, bail and probation officers daily, even if simply to supply information or
confirm that they are indeed working on the factors justice is concerned about. In this
article I focus on the important role they play in lower criminal courts, providing essential
supports, verifying information and participating in monitoring and reporting to justice
officials—negotiating care and control for their clients in conflict with the law.
Writing about large shifts in penal regulation, Garland (2001) and others (e.g. Cohen,
1985; Feeley and Simon, 1992) focused on the fading of welfare approaches and the
emergence of a new penal era defined by actuarial and managerial approaches to social
control. Non-profit sectors have variously been described as responsibilized, co-opted
and colonized by criminal justice concerns about assessment, supervision, risk manage-
ment and punitive regulation (Fitzgibbon, 2011; Mythen et al., 2012; Tomczak, 2017;
Trudeau, 2007; Worrall, 2008). The post-welfare phase is said to have resulted in penal
‘net widening’, with community practitioners and agencies charged with surveillance
and punitive duties related to individuals on bail, probation and parole.
Highlighting the importance of discretion, many have demonstrated that while front-
line practitioners are affected by actuarial or managerial pressures, they find ways to
support clients by adapting standardized risk tools, logics and supervision policies
(Deering, 2011; Goddard, 2012; Kemshall and Maguire, 2001; Lipsky, 1980; Lynch,
1998; Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003; Werth, 2016). What is less well understood
however is how (and to what end) discretion is used by practitioners working with clients
facing intersecting problems related to poverty, discrimination, homelessness, mental
health and dementia, who find themselves before the criminal courts and are referred to
as being ‘complex-needs’ and risky. It is essential to consider this issue, given the insti-
tutional cycling and over representation of multiply disadvantaged individuals (hereafter
‘clients’) in emergency and criminal justice systems.
Working on intersecting issues, practitioners cross traditional agency and disciplinary
boundaries and can become important agents of resistance, advocacy and reform. Their
understandings of risk and willingness to offer support and supervision inform a great
deal of legal decision making. Nevertheless, few have examined these ‘infrastructures of
risk communication’ (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 5) as they are experienced by com-
munity practitioners working with justice-involved clients. Addressing this gap, I ana-
lyse how they operate as brokers for clients and criminal justice courts, mobilizing
knowledge across systems to manage and problem-solve. I focus on how they assess
offender risk/need and responsivity and contribute to courts knowledge about and under-
standing of their clients. I argue that they extend the power and reach of law to enhance
their therapeutic projects, but also work to deflect the power of law and redirect dis-
course towards evidence-based, medicalized, cultural and sociological or rights-based
perspectives.
In the next sections I illustrate how community practitioners mobilize knowledge, mak-
ing choices and manipulating narratives that have important effects on release planning,
diversion, specialized courts and community conditions. I discuss the ‘micro-politics of
risk interpretation’ and show how interventions are informed by multiple stakeholders with
different understandings of what risk management should look like. Then I focus on how
practitioners manoeuvre the courts working ‘with’, ‘for’ or ‘against’ the grain: offering
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