NCJ Number
227678
Journal
Punishment and Society Volume: 11 Issue: 3 Dated: July 2009 Pages: 319-336
Date Published
July 2009
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article explores recasting people in conflict with the law as clients of criminal justice institutions.
Abstract
An offender is not an offender when she is identified as needy and is motivated to address her needs by accepting help and engaging with criminal justice system-based services designed to help her help herself. She is not an offender when she has the right to be treated, to be served. She is not an offender when the people she is dealing with are not her punishers but rather her therapists, service providers, and friends. Following its own internal logic, when the offender is not an offender, the penal system is not a penal system, at least not when it is catering to its clients. It is instead, a system of care, recovery, and service provision that empowers its clients to consume its services. These translations flag the fluidity of the relationships of justice, highlighting the work done by different subjectivities within broader governing projects. Clients are not an entirely new species in the territory of criminal justice, but they are not well explored. This article is specifically interested in how and why offenders are translated into clients through particular relationships. The client and the offender are characters of the criminal justice system with divergent subjectivities. Notes and references