INTERORGANIZATIONAL UTILITY OF WELFARE STIGMA IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM*

• Author: NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEVE,ARMANDO LARA‐MILLÁN
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• Date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12128

INTERORGANIZATIONAL UTILITY OF WELFARE

STIGMA IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM∗

ARMANDO LARA-MILL ´

AN1and

NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEVE2

1Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley

2Department of Criminal Justice, Temple University

KEYWORDS: punishment, jails, courts, race, discretion

The appropriation of “welfare stigma” or stereotypes about poor people’s overre-

liance and abuse of public aid in two core criminal justice functions is examined: felony

adjudication in a court system and space allocation in a jail. Through a comparative

ethnographic study in which an abductive analysis of data (20 months of fieldwork)

was used, we show that criminal justice gatekeepers utilize welfare stigma to create

stricter eligibility criteria for due process in criminal courts and occupancy in jails.

Specifically, the number of court appearances, motions, trials, jail beds, food, showers,

and medical services is considered by professionals to be the benefits that individuals

seek to access and abuse. Professionals view their role as preventing (rather than grant-

ing) access to these resources. The comparative nature of our data reveals that welfare

stigma has interorganizational utility by serving two different organizational goals: It

streamlines convictions in courts, which pulls defendants through adjudication, and

conversely, it expands early release from jails, which pulls inmates out of the custody

population. In the context of diminishing social safety nets, our findings have impli-

cations for understanding how discretion is exercised in an American criminal justice

system increasingly tasked with the distribution of social services to the urban poor.

The results of recent analyses have revealed that, in the context of diminishing social

safety nets, criminal justice institutions are becoming an important source of social ser-

vices for the urban poor (Comfort, 2007, 2013; Gustafson, 2011; Natapoff, 2015). That

is, the urban poor increasingly receive social services through contact with the criminal

justice system rather than through contact with traditional welfare agencies. As a result,

scholars are now studying the provision of social services across almost all criminal jus-

tice contact points, including policing (Stuart, 2014, 2016), therapeutic jurisprudence in

courts (Hannah-Moffat and Maurutto, 2012; Johnson and DiPietro, 2012; Moore, 2007),

drug-treatment programs in penal settings (Haney, 2010; McCorkel, 2004), and reentry

∗Both authors contributed equally to this work. Co-authors are noted in alphabetical order. The

authors are especially grateful to Ruth Peterson; Mary Pattillo; Reuben Miller; Camila Gripp;

Elizabeth Onasch; Ben Fleury-Steiner; Heather Ann Thompson; the numerous anonymous re-

viewers, editors, and discussants along the way; and the amazing community of scholars in the

Racial Democracy Crime and Justice Network (RDCJN).

Direct correspondence to Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Department of Criminal Justice, Temple

University, Gladfelter Hall, 5th floor, 1115 Polett Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19122 (e-mail: nvan-

cleve@temple.edu).

C2016 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12128

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 55 Number 1 59–84 2017 59

60 LARA-MILL ´

AN & VAN CLEVE

programs in probation settings (McKim, 2008; Miller, 2014). Criminal justice settings

that combine social service provision, such as therapeutic and rehabilitative program-

ing, with traditional crime control goals, such as surveillance and incapacitation, have

been documented in these studies (Schept, 2015). Decision makers grapple with organi-

zational tension as they simultaneously evaluate individuals for criminal risk and social

need (Hannah-Moffatt, 2005). Such assessments, which rely on practitioners’ discretion,

often leverage stereotypes about worthy and unworthy types of social need to allocate

healthcare, counseling, shelter, food, and other resources increasingly unavailable out-

side of prison (Haney, 2010; McCorkel, 2004).

In this article, we examine how these trends might affect discretion in two empirical

sites where we would not readily expect social service provision: felony criminal courts

and local jails in large urban jurisdictions. These gateways are important because they

process most of the nation’s poor people of color into the criminal justice system. Specif-

ically, how does the tension of criminal justice social service provision structure orga-

nizational decision-making and the allocation of resources in these respective agencies?

Moreover, how does this tension affect the interorganizational dynamics between courts

and jails?

We report on comparative findings from two ethnographic field sites: the felony courts

in Cook County, Illinois, experiencing extreme docket pressure, and a jail intake unit

making use of alternative release mechanisms. These two cases are apt for compari-

son because extreme docket pressure in courts and the expanded use of alternative re-

lease mechanisms in jails are growing features of large urban jurisdictions in the United

States (Gershowitz and Killinger, 2011; Shubik-Richards and Stemen, 2010; Stuntz, 2013).

Ethnographic fieldwork is particularly well suited for examining actors who exert broad

discretion; in particular, it allows for the observation of formal and informal processes

that govern how defendants are adjudicated in the court and how space is allocated in a

jail (Haney, 2015). We study courts and jails as “criminal justice adjacencies” (Van Cleve

and Mayes, 2015), which highlights the shared culture between loosely coupled criminal

justice institutions to explicate wider structural effects. As with many criminal justice con-

tact points, courts and jails share structural co-dependencies in case management despite

their distinct organizational objectives. In large jurisdictions, jail capacity often pressures

criminal courts to manage caseloads more efficiently. Likewise, the number of pretrial

detainees and convicted inmates exerts pressure on jail capacity.1

Our findings demonstrate how frontline criminal justice gatekeepers mobilize “welfare

stigma” or stereotypes about poor people’s overreliance and abuse of public aid to allo-

cate criminal justice resources. These stereotypes center on the belief that poor people

abuse public resources because they are morally deficient; that is, the expectation that

poor people—especially poor people of color—tend to be lazy, lead mismanaged lives,

and hail from dysfunctional households (Katz, 2013). Welfare stigma is used to create

1. From a cultural standpoint, in jails, sheriffs play a gatekeeping role in granting or denying attorneys

access to pretrial detainees, thereby forcing defense attorneys to learn the formal and informal

rules of the jail (e.g., how to cope with lengthy lock-downs). In courts, sheriffs escort attorneys

through side lock-ups, transport defendants, and are important fixtures within courtroom culture.

We observe that jailers are important fixtures within courtroom culture and wield considerable

informal power: translating legal jargon to defendants, publicly shaming some defendants, and

even creating cumbersome challenges for defense attorneys in accessing their clients.