This book demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management dangerously co-habit justice at the self/society divide. This cohabitation is the power to harm (i.e., to reduce being and to repress becoming), for the kept and their keepers, for their managers and their watchers. This harm as “madness” occurs through interactive symbolic, linguistic, materially and cultural intensities. Overcoming these intensities or “conditions of control” for one and all necessitates the cultivation of transformative and dynamic habits of character. Embodying such citizenship makes the evolving praxis ... More

This book demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management dangerously co-habit justice at the self/society divide. This cohabitation is the power to harm (i.e., to reduce being and to repress becoming), for the kept and their keepers, for their managers and their watchers. This harm as “madness” occurs through interactive symbolic, linguistic, materially and cultural intensities. Overcoming these intensities or “conditions of control” for one and all necessitates the cultivation of transformative and dynamic habits of character. Embodying such citizenship makes the evolving praxis of social justice (as fair-minded and dignified, therapeutic and healing, restorative and communal) that much more possible. The theoretical, empirical, and policy dimensions of this thesis are examined by way of judicial decision-making that sustains captivity and risk management in three controversial total confinement contexts. These contexts include developmentally immature juveniles waived to the adult system and found competent to stand trial; psychiatrically disordered inmates placed in long-term disciplinary segregation where said isolation is not deemed cruel and unusual punishment; and formerly incarcerated sexually violent predators subjected to multiple forms of civil detention, re-entry surveillance, and communal inspection. The judicially endorsed harm that follows in each instance extends to victims, offenders, and the communities that bind both groups. The book concludes with a series of provocative, yet sensible, recommendations in theory development; methodology and future research; immediate and emergent praxis interventions; pedagogy and (continual) training; and institutional practice, programming, and policy. These reforms are relevant for the legal, psychiatric, clinical forensic, scholarly academic, bioethical, and human service/social welfare communities. Collectively, these change initiatives suggest several vibrant directions by which to activate captivity’s release, to re-evaluate the risk management thesis, and to experience character’s promise in our lives, in the lives of others, in mental health law, and in all expressions of dynamic human/social cohabitation.