WHEN POLICY COMES TO TOWN: DISCOURSES AND DILEMMAS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF A STATEWIDE REENTRY POLICY IN KANSAS

• Date: 01 August 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12146
• Published date: 01 August 2017

WHEN POLICY COMES TO TOWN: DISCOURSES AND

DILEMMAS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF A STATEWIDE

REENTRY POLICY IN KANSAS∗

ANDRES F. RENGIFO,1DON STEMEN,2and ETHAN AMIDON3

1School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University—Newark

2Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Loyola University Chicago

3Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Missouri State University

KEYWORDS: corrections reform, prisoner reentry, worker resistance

In this case study, we document challenges to reform implementation posed by line

staff, supervisors, and managers during a large-scale realignment of the Kansas De-

partment of Corrections (KDOC) in which they sought to replace a traditional ap-

proach of “risk containment” focused on surveillance and incarceration with a new

model of “risk reduction” focused on service delivery and reintegration. We draw on

interviews, observations, and archival research to document the staff’s discursive chal-

lenges to the rollout of the new policy. More specifically, we describe how varying chal-

lenges to the reforms—“denial,” “dismissal,” and “defiance”—reflect actors’ positions

within the organization, the local contexts in which they operate, and more general

frames of interpretation of the long-term orientation of the KDOC. We integrate these

perspectives to contribute to the ongoing expansion of conventional models of penal

change that highlight the role of actors and local social and institutional context as

moderators of the gap between “law on the books” and “law in action.”

In 2006, the Kansas Department of Corrections (KDOC) formalized an agency-wide,

multiyear process of reorganization. The series of reforms—collectively known as the

Kansas Offender Risk Reduction and Reentry Plan (KOR3P)—were intended to re-

place the KDOC’s traditional approach of risk containment focused on surveillance, en-

forcement, and incarceration with a new model of risk reduction focused on rehabilita-

tion, service delivery, and prisoner reintegration (KDOC, 2006). As noted in The New

York Times, the initiative was aimed at offering “a hand instead of cuffs” (Eckholm,

2008). Through these reforms, new programs were established and corrections officers,

counselors, and parole officers were retained in new assessment tools, new communi-

cation techniques, and new intervention protocols. Additional positions were created

through an upgraded division of Reentry Services staffed with specialists in charge of

coordinating services for high-risk prisoners and parolees (Pellant et al., 2007). Finally,

also through these reforms, collaborations with partners were realigned, recentralizing

∗We are grateful to Rosemary Gardner and the anonymous reviewers of Criminology for their help-

ful suggestions, comments, and guidance. This research was supported by grants from the National

Institute of Corrections and the JETH Foundation.

Direct correspondence to Andres F. Rengifo, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University—

Newark, 123 Washington St., Suite 554, Newark, NJ 07102 (e-mail: arengifo@rutgers.edu).

C2017 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12146

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 55 Number 3 603–630 2017 603

604 RENGIFO, STEMEN, & AMIDON

the planning and provision of some services, mobilizing accountability boards, and cre-

ating incentives for community corrections agencies to adopt risk-reduction goals and

protocols.

The content of these reforms marked a shift in penal policy not only within the KDOC

but also within corrections more broadly. Since the 1980s, Kansas (like other states) had

adopted much of the apparatus of the “new penology” (Feeley and Simon, 1992) focused

on the management of subpopulations and on the regulation of risk through selective

long-term control. The KOR3P reforms were intended to reconcile some elements of

this model, such as the systemic use of actuarial instruments and attention to cost con-

tainment, with many of the traditional discourses, objectives, and practices of the “old

penology” centered on rehabilitation and individualized treatment. In the end, KOR3P

had the potential to reshape corrections in terms of both institutional design—to promote

a new set of values and institute a new set of practices—and institutional footprint—to re-

configure the size and composition of corrections staff and supervised populations and to

reduce the social and economic burden of penal policy.

Although attempts at this type of organizational change are ubiquitous in criminal jus-

tice systems, just as apparent is the fact that such reforms routinely fail to be executed

as designed. Indeed, scholars examining the creation and execution of formal policy have

consistently documented a disconnect between “law on the books” and “law in action”

that gets amplified during times of reorganization (Grattet and Jenness, 2008; Kemshall

and Maguire, 2001; Lynch, 1998; Lynch and Omori, 2014; Nagel and Schulhofer, 1992;

Rudes, 2012; Verma, 2015).1For example, the results of research show how some top-

down reforms aimed at pushing for incremental change may discourage the review of

more general, underlying principles as a result of their narrow focus on specific issues

such as recidivism or budgets (Gottschalk, 2016) or as a result of the lack of coherence,

timing, and internal marketing of the reforms (Taxman and Belenko, 2012).

Critically, many initiatives wane in part as a result of circumvention, resistance, skep-

ticism, and other discursive and behavioral manifestations of agency by varying types of

criminal justice workers (Cheliotis, 2006). Line staff, for example, may translate the con-

tent of reforms, or they may switch back and forth between new and old models (Lipsky,

1980; Lynch, 1998; McNeill et al., 2009; Steiner, Travis, and Makarios, 2011; Vuolo and

Kruttschnitt, 2008). Supervisors may redefine top-down reforms, altering their content

or scope when providing feedback to subordinates or when reporting activities (Rudes,

2012). Managers may seek overrides to new reforms, altering timelines for implemen-

tation, highlighting competing priorities, or shifting responsibilities to other operators

(Clair and Winter, 2016; Isabella, 1990). These patterns have been noted by researchers in

the implementation of policing reforms (Engel, 2000; Willis, Mastrofsky, and Weisburd,

2007), sentencing reforms (Griffin and Wooldredge, 2001; Lynch and Omori, 2014), and

corrections reforms (Taxman and Belenko, 2012).

We contribute to this literature by further specifying the role of managers, supervi-

sors, and staff in the process of implementation of large-scale reforms like KOR3P. We

1. The reforms in Kansas involved more than formal law and policy; they included a change in vision,

a reformulation of mission, and a cultural shift within the KDOC. As such, we are not discussing a

narrow, static gap between law on the books and law in action but a broader disconnect between

formal statements of policy and vision and the implementation and translation of those statements

into practice.