Abstract
The work of the juvenile justice system is marked by profound moral ambiguity and practical uncertainty, yet that work is also thoroughly bureaucratized. Rules and routines circumscribe the work’s ambiguity and uncertainty. So what does it mean to do justice under such conditions? Drawing on field notes from the observation of 33 different sentencing meetings in one state’s juvenile justice system, this article presents a grounded view of this problem, focusing on seemingly contradictory routine and creativity observed in the sentencing meetings. To explain this apparent contradiction, this article offers an original theoretical contribution, tying together a pragmatist theory of action, research from the practice theory tradition in organizational studies, as well as research on ritual, to develop an account of the ways in which structured actions allow people to navigate ambiguity and uncertainty. The article then examines one particularly difficult case that causes the organizational routine to break down. This breakdown forces the juvenile justice professionals to get creative with their bureaucratically available options. While they deviate from the typical organizational routine, they return to established ritual of the sentencing process. The article concludes with an initial attempt to develop a broader pragmatist account of ritual, focusing on the ways in which ritualized action make concrete our abstract and often contradictory ideals.
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Notes
All names are pseudonyms.
The number of months for each Grid Level do not reflect any criminologically informed understanding of the impact of a sentence length on delinquent behavior or recidivism. Rather, the given month ranges are a vestige of the organizational exigencies that DYS faced at the time it created the sentencing guidelines. At that time, DYS correctional facilities were overcrowded. The month-ranges that they arrived at helped alleviate the overcrowding. It is important to note, however, that during the time of my observations, the DYS facilities were no longer overcrowded, yet the same sentence ranges remained..
From the author’s field notes.
Noticeably absent was Troy’s mother. She had told the boy that she was coming to this meeting. The staff all doubted that claim given the mother’s track record. Minutes before the meeting was supposed to begin, she called, claiming the muffler on her car had broken so she could not attend.
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This study was funded by the Rappaport Foundation and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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Wakeham, J. Pragmatic justice in juvenile sentencing: agreeing what to do but not why. Theor Soc 50, 201–229 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-021-09432-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-021-09432-6