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测试的改革新模式的人种学研究。由于市政府面临着越来越多的挑战——财政、道德、法律和基础设施——目前的监禁实践，本研究询问了对正义和变革形式的不同理解可以在当地进行讨论和采取行动，以及这些如何被纳入全国刑事司法改革的对话。这项研究将基于12个月的参与者观察、绘图练习和对两个新合作项目参与者的访谈。第一个是一群倡导该市刑事司法改革的非营利组织和激进组织。第二种是定期召开刑事司法机构“工作组”代表会议，讨论和评价目前的改革。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常规的空间，习惯于独立运作的组织和个人试图协调努力，并在此过程中阐明他们自己的制度、政治和道德利益。通过对政府官员、改革倡导者和州政府雇员开展的刑事司法改革的日常工作提供民族志见解，该项目将刑事司法改革置于地方和国家司法政治经济之中，并对美国政府（地方、州和联邦）与民间社会围绕刑事司法改革的合作所带来的挑战和可能性提供强有力的理解。该项目旨在促进有关犯罪、法律和治理的学术对话；人种人类学；美国人类学，以及越来越多的关于刑事司法改革的全国性讨论。

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.