Doctoral Dissertation Research: Governance and Networks of Coordination in Community Diversion Programs

针对监禁率的上升，美国主要城市采取了创造性的替代方案，如毒品法庭和精神健康法庭。这些替代方案通常依赖于连接市政府、非营利组织和私人服务提供商的复杂网络。该奖项支持的研究将审查这些协调合作的运作和有效性。此外，研究人员还询问了政府权力下放对社区和系统客户的结果有什么影响。这对寻求降低监禁率的所有利益攸关方来说都是至关重要的信息。这项研究将由宾夕法尼亚大学人类学博士候选人Tali Ziv在费城进行，他的导师是小约翰·杰克逊博士。费城已被联邦政府授权努力减少其庞大的监狱人口。一种回应是法医强化康复（FIR）计划，这是一项针对药物滥用和轻微精神疾病的减刑和社区替代计划。FIR从事两个大型非营利分包合同，并协调监狱，缓刑和假释，法院和非营利社区服务；这使得它成为研究分散量刑替代方案的理想场所。研究人员将在法庭和社区进行人种学观察，记录FIR社会工作者的日常工作，并采访法官、律师、顾问、客户和刑事司法系统代表。此外，她将从档案中收集数据，以跟踪这些新的制度形式的出现。综合起来，这些数据将使她能够理解协调工作的微观过程，刑事司法系统的不同层次及其社区转介如何相互建立知识，以及这不仅对理解量刑选择，而且对理解当代城市治理的本质意味着什么。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Major American cities have responded to rising incarceration rates with creative alternatives, such as Drug Courts and Mental Health Courts. These alternatives often depend on complex networks that connect municipal governments, not-for-profit organizations, and private service providers. The research supported by this award will examine the functioning and effectiveness of these coordinated collaborations. In addition, the researchers ask what effects decentralizing government has on outcomes, both for communities and for system clients. This is critical information for all stakeholders seeking to lower incarceration rates.The research will be undertaken in the city of Philadelphia by University of Pennsylvania anthropology doctoral candidate Tali Ziv, who is supervised by Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr. Philadelphia has been federally mandated to undertake efforts to reduce its large prison population. One response has been the Forensic Intensive Recovery (FIR) Program, a sentence reduction and community alternative program for substance abuse and minor mental illness. FIR engages two large nonprofit subcontracts and coordinates the jails, probation and parole, the courts, and nonprofit community based services; this makes it an ideal site for research on decentralized sentencing alternatives. The researcher will carry out ethnographic observations in the court room and in the community, document the daily work of FIR social workers, and interview judges, attorneys, counselors, clients, and criminal justice system representatives. In addition, she will collect data from archives to track the emergence of these novel institutional formations. Taken together, these data will allow her to understand the micro-processes through which coordination works, how the different layers of the criminal justice system and its community referrals build knowledge about one another, and what this means for understanding not only sentencing alternatives but also the nature of contemporary urban governance.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.