Title: 2012 Critical Criminology & Justice Studies Conference Keynote Address Rethinking Intervention: Consciousness, Solidarity, and Hope as Criminological Principles
Abstract: Keywords: transformative intervention, rehabilitation, preventionWhat do I mean by rethinking intervention, and why do I think it matters?For a very long time, I've found myself deeply conflicted about the role of rehabilitation, or treatment, in a progressive vision of justice. Like a lot of other criminologists on the Left, I've rejected the conservative idea that there's we can do to help people who offend to turn their lives around for the better-and so all we can do is lock them up and essentially forget about them. It's hard to overstate how much that argument fed into the growth of mass incarceration as our main response to crime in the United States-or the magnitude of the waste of human potential this has represented. And so I've felt it's very important to kick back against the idea that nothing and I've done that. On several occasions I've looked hard at the evidence on various kinds of intervention programs and argued that some things do work-at least a little and that investing in those things is a lot better use of our resources than doing what we've been doing. I've been buried up to my ears in that research literature again recently (Currie forthcoming), and I'd make the same argument today.But that's not the whole story.As I said, I think that the defense of the idea of rehabilitation, within limits, is necessary and correct. But the limits are very real. And in the haste to fight back against the conservative argument, we have sometimes fallen by default into supporting programs that we shouldn't support-or at least lumping all kinds of things together in our defense of what works, without asking too many questions about what some of those interventions actually involve. And maybe even more importantly, we haven't put much energy into thinking harder about what a genuinely progressive approach to intervention would look like-and how we would deliver it (Currie 2008).Some people on the progressive side, of course, would say we don't need to think about that question-and would probably scratch their heads when I bring it up as an issue. There is a strong and enduring current of non-interventionism on the left- a sense that if we just got the state and its justice system offpeople's backs, everything would be okay. But I don't think that view will cut it in the face of today's realities.Last year in Oakland, California, more than 100 people lost their lives to violence, almost entirely people of color, mostly young, who were killed by people very much like themselves. Progressive people around the world were rightly appalled by the spectacle of over a thousand people, very disproportionately black and poor, who died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. But violence, mostly concentrated in the same kind of communities, has taken a toll in lives equal to several hundred Katrinas over the last generation. And beyond the death toll, there is the pervasive victimization by violence that doesn't kill you but that makes your life scary and intolerable. There are many places in the United States where girls and women are afraid to go out of their houses to school or work for fear that they'll be attacked by men. But then again, they may also be afraid to stay in their houses because they're afraid they'll be attacked by the men who live there.In the face of this situation, to me, simple nonintervention is not an option, morally or politically. People really do engage in behavior that is destructive, predatory, and exploitative-as well as often self-destructive. They do things that violate the most basic human rights, dignity, and security of other people, and that can accumulate, over time, to destroy the social fabric of whole communities. They engage in behavior that's fueled by values that go against what most of us progressives believe and that we couldn't in a million years support. And in the process lives are destroyed-both those of victims and those of perpetrators. …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
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