The Medicine & Its Objects Workshop is delighted to present:
Emily Claypool
Doctoral Student, SSA
and
Cameron Day
Doctoral Student, Sociology
“The Politics of Evidence and Rehabilitation:
A Discourse Analysis of the Risk-Needs-Responsivity Paradigm in
Community Supervision Policy and Practice”
Discussant: Associate Professor Nicole Marwell, School of Social Service Administration
Abstract: The ‘Evidence-based’ Risk Needs Responsivity (RNR) model has become the most heavily cited and diffusely implemented model to inform community supervision programming at a time when extra-carceral alternatives to mass incarceration are increasingly popular among policymakers and academic researchers. This article examines how RNR has risen to the top of the scientific hierarchy in order to command substantial influence over extra-carceral disciplinary policy and practice. We will contextualize the ascendance of the RNR model against the backdrop of academic debates between punitive and rehabilitative models of incarceration, welfare state retrenchment, and the turn toward an “evidence-based” policy paradigm renunciative of ideological contestation. RNR has come to be widely understood in this environment as an effective tool protecting the criminal-legal system against its public perception as wasteful, unscientific and chaotic. After reviewing the academic discourse of RNR developers (the Rehabilitationist), we argue that the academic proponents of the RNR model mobilize technical-scientific discourse and a purported ‘pragmatic’ empirical approach to facilitate RNR’s diffusion. The scientific discourse sustaining RNR can be read as a project for objectifying the paradigm and its worldview and insulating the paradigm from ideological critique by ensconcing it in facticity.
Wednesday, December 4th
4:30 to 6:00 p.m.
Rosenwald 329
***Snacks and refreshments will be provided.***
To receive a copy of the paper, or if you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please email Katie Gibson (gkate@uchicago.edu).
