Doctoral Dissertation Research: Reform and Innovation in an Urban Criminal Justice System

这个项目是对新奥尔良刑事司法系统中正在试验的新的改革模式的人种学研究。由于市政府面临着越来越多的挑战-财政，道德，法律的，和基础设施-其目前的监禁做法，本研究询问什么不同的理解正义和形式的变化可以讨论和采取行动，在当地，以及如何这些正在采取刑事司法改革的全国对话。这项研究将基于12个月的参与者观察，绘图练习，以及对两个新合作项目参与者的采访。第一个是一群倡导该市刑事司法改革的非营利和活动家组织。第二种是由刑事司法机构的代表组成“工作组”定期举行会议，讨论和评估当前的改革。这两个网站有可能为刑事司法改革项目提供新的见解，因为它们提供了一个经常性的空间，习惯于独立运作的组织和个人试图协调努力，并在这样做时阐明自己的制度，政治和道德利害关系。通过提供对政府官员、改革倡导者和国家雇员进行的刑事司法改革日常工作的人种学见解，该项目将在地方和国家司法政治经济学中宣传刑事司法改革，并提供对政府与国家之间合作所带来的挑战和可能性的深刻理解。（地方、州和联邦）和民间社会围绕美国刑事司法改革开展的活动。该项目旨在促进关于犯罪，法律和治理的学术对话;种族人类学;和美国人类学，以及对刑事司法改革日益增长的国家对话。

This project is an ethnographic study of new modes of reform being tested in the New Orleans criminal justice system. As the city government faces growing challenges -- financial, moral, legal, and infrastructural -- to its current practices of incarceration, this research asks what different understandings of justice and forms of change can be discussed and acted upon locally, and how these are being taken up in the national conversation on criminal justice reform. The research will be based on 12 months of participant-observation, mapping exercises, and interviews with participants in two new collaborative projects. The first is a group of nonprofit and activist organizations advocating for criminal justice reform in the city. The second is a regular meeting of representatives from criminal justice agencies in "working groups" to discuss and evaluate current reforms. These two sites have the potential to provide new insight into the project of criminal justice reform, as they provide a regular space in which organizations and individuals accustomed to operating independently attempt to coordinate efforts, and in so doing articulate their own institutional, political, and ethical stakes. By providing ethnographic insight into the everyday work of criminal justice reform as it is carried out by government officials, reform advocates, and state employees, this project will situate criminal justice reform within local and national political economies of justice, and provide a robust understanding of the challenges and possibilities presented by collaboration between government (local, state, and federal) and civil society around criminal justice reform in the United States. This project aims to contribute to scholarly conversations on crime, law, and governance; the anthropology of race; and Americanist anthropology, as well as to the growing national conversation on criminal justice reform.