When punishment and philanthropy mix: Voluntary organizations and the governance of the domestic violence offender
| Author | Rashmee Singh |
| Published date | 01 August 2012 |
| Date | 01 August 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1362480611420904 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
420904TCR16310.1177/1362480611420904SinghTheoretical Criminology
Article
Theoretical Criminology
16(3) 269 –287
When punishment and
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480611420904
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organizations and the
governance of the domestic
violence offender
Rashmee Singh
University of Toronto, Canada and American Bar Foundation, USA
Abstract
This article examines the administration of community based punishment in Toronto’s
specialized domestic violence courts. Voluntary organizations play an integral role in
the Ontario government’s strategy to manage domestic violence. Currently, an array
of ‘mainstream’ and ‘ethno-specific’ community agencies operate as quasi-criminal
justice organizations to rehabilitate and supervise court mandated offenders. Despite
their categorization however, both types of organizations largely cater to the same
demographics. The discussion explores the techniques of governance service providers
deploy when counseling their clientele. The emergence of two differing regimes of power,
one emphasizing care and the other discipline, along the mythological categories of
the ‘mainstream’ and ‘ethno-specific’ illuminate the constitutive effects of organizational
habits on the delivery of punishment.
Keywords
discipline, domestic violence, governmentality, pastoral power, voluntary organizations
Introduction
In recent years, the burgeoning theoretical literature on voluntary organizations has
drawn attention to their integral presence in the criminal justice system, particularly in
Corresponding author:
Rashmee Singh, American Bar Foundation, 750 North Lake Shore Drive, 4th Floor, Chicago, IL 60611, USA
Email: rsingh@abfn.org
270
Theoretical Criminology 16(3)
penal regimes of change (Hannah-Moffat, 2001; Maurutto, 2003; Merry, 2001), as well
as how they operate more generally as techniques of citizenship in liberal democracies
(Cruikshank, 1999). Analyzing the philanthropic organization through the framework of
governmentality, Cruikshank characterizes the power relations typical of voluntary agen-
cies as ‘gentle coercion’; these regimes work by first constituting subjects as deficient or
apathetic in some way and then developing solutions aimed to help individuals help
themselves. Voluntary programs target individual will and seek to create active citizens
by re-shaping the desires of subjects. Cruikshank’s theorizations raise several important
questions when considering the subjectivity of the hybrid voluntary/quasi-criminal
justice counselor, a figure constituted through the fusion of the philanthropic organiza-
tion with rehabilitative regimes of punishment. Specifically, how do community based
punishers, who typically rely on techniques of gentle coercion, govern when working
with criminalized subjects? What forms of knowledges authorize community based
institutions and administrators to deliver self-help programs as part of a penal regime?
Overall, how do counselors perform as quasi-criminal justice officials?
This article seeks to examine these questions with reference to empirical research on
Toronto’s specialized domestic violence courts and the penal project to change the
domestic violence offender. Between 1997 and 2001, the provincial Ministry of the
Attorney General1 worked in conjunction with several Toronto based community organi-
zations to implement specialized domestic violence courts in each of the city’s provincial
court houses. Along with the implementation of enhanced investigative and prosecutorial
strategies, what differentiates the specialized courts from the regular prosecution process
are the Partner Abuse Response (PAR) counseling programs that offenders attend as a
condition of their bail or probation orders. In order to administer counseling through the
courts, the provincial government has outsourced the responsibility of reform to a net-
work of community based organizations. Currently, 10 agencies receive government
funding to operate as accredited PAR providers, a process which requires service providers
to undergo training on the criminal justice system, run their programs in accordance with
court procedures, and deliver counseling based on the Duluth curriculum, a feminist
disciplinary model that locates the roots of domestic violence within unequal power
relations between men and women.2
In order to accommodate Toronto’s diverse demographics, the Ministry of the Attorney
General has ensured the availability of ethno-specific programming in a range of
languages for offenders born outside of Canada.3 Currently, seven of the 10 organiza-
tions identify as ‘ethno-specific’, while the remainder are classified as ‘mainstream’.
Although these agencies are known as PAR providers within the field of the specialized
domestic violence courts, for all but one, counseling for court mandated abusers com-
prises a very small proportion of the services these organizations deliver. The majority
operate as immigrant service organizations; the remaining have varying mandates.
Despite their categorization as ‘mainstream’ and ‘ethno-specific’, however, in reality,
both types of organizations deliver PAR programming to similar demographics of
Canadian and non-Canadian born men. Due to material constraints, several of the orga-
nizations originally enlisted to provide counseling for specific ethno-racial communities
now run ‘mainstream’, English language groups. The mythologies surrounding the
ethno-specific/mainstream categorical divide will be explored in further detail in the
remainder of the article.
Singh
271
The roster of community based organizations with varying mandates enlisted to
deliver a standardized counseling program within a single penal regime of change
enables us to observe how ‘subsidiary authorities fragment the legal power to punish’
(Foucault, 1977: 21). This article draws on interview findings conducted with several
PAR counselors based in each of the 11 organizations to gain a sense of how community
based workers, as ‘experts’ on the abusive man, perform their quasi-criminal justice
roles. Their narratives suggest the existence of differing regimes of governance along the
categorical distinction of ‘ethno-specific’ and ‘mainstream’, in spite of their standardiza-
tion. Thus, despite the fact that counselors based in mainstream organizations frequently
counsel immigrant men and those based in ethno-specific, immigrant agencies regularly
work with Canadian born men, and as accredited PAR program providers, all follow the
rules of the court and counsel according to the Duluth curriculum, two differing strate-
gies of governance emerge along the ethno-specific and mainstream dichotomy. While
counselors based in ethno-specific agencies regularly deploy pastoral strategies to per-
form as parents and nurturers of the men in their programs, services providers based in
mainstream organizations tend to govern as disciplinarians.
These distinctions illuminate the effects of organizational habit on the administration
of punishment within Toronto’s penal project to change the domestic violence offender.
While the deployment of disciplinary strategies is foreseeable, given that correcting the
abuser is the aim of the PAR program, the unearthing of pastoral strategies of governance
emphasizing care is less expected; pastoral strategies are typically associated with the
governance of ‘vulnerable’, criminalized subjects (Hannah-Moffat, 2001). As a feminist
disciplinary regime, the Duluth framework constitutes the abuser as far more risky than
vulnerable. However, within the immigrant settlement agency, the power of care is an
organizational habit, intertwined with the image of the diasporic client as a subject of
need, whose vulnerability stems from his displacement. Thus, the organizational logic so
central to the immigrant settlement organization exerts an effect on the delivery of the
ethno-specific PAR program. These findings illuminate the constitutive effects of
the translation process, and the persistence of techniques of governance more typical of
the voluntary immigrant organization within regimes of punishment.
Governing the souls and minds of offenders: disciplinary
and pastoral power
The outsourcing of punishment to philanthropic and non-profit institutions is a long-
standing criminal justice practice. Despite this systemic legacy, only very recently has
research begun to consider how non-state actors perform their governing roles
(Castellano, 2009; Crawford, 1997; Halliday et al., 2009; Merry, 2001). In addition,
while Foucauldian scholars have written volumes on the varying forms of power
deployed on criminalized subjects since the post-Enlightenment decline of visible and
bodily penal techniques, only a few have analytically linked the deployment of pastoral
and disciplinary strategies in the art of punishing—both of which manifest as ‘gentle
coercion’—with the crafting of ‘benevolent’ penal interventions and the participation of
philanthropic organizations (Foucault, 1977; Garland, 1990; Hannah-Moffat, 2001;
Maurutto, 2003). In her historical analysis of the penal techniques aimed at female
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Theoretical Criminology 16(3)
offenders, Hannah-Moffat (2001) illustrates how incarcerated women were subject to a
mix of disciplinary and pastoral strategies at various points in time. Her research illumi-
nates the deployment of ‘motherly love’ in the governance of the...
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