Community corrections at a critical juncture: Privatisation, race, and the redefinition of the community after Attica

Abstract

Critical junctures can propel a reorientation of state, civil society, and market. I examine this process during an influential historical moment in the early 1970s, when actors ranging from incarcerated organisers to political elites worked to redefine the role of community organisations in corrections. These efforts resulted in a policy privatising the delivery of community-based correctional services in the case I study in Wisconsin, USA. Using archival records, I demonstrate how this policy was situated in leaders’ anxieties about the control of Black men. I trace historically emergent relationships among racialised social control, privatisation and NGOs, which reverberate in the non-profit sector today. The research invites further examination of moments of contingency in criminal justice policy after exceptional violence by the state.