Former graduate student and current Ohio University Professor Ursula Castellano publishes dissertation monograph.
Outsourcing Justice: The Role of Nonprofit Caseworkers in Pretrial Release Programs
(First Forum Press)
Do pretrial release programs, initiated and now operated by a range of
nonprofit organizations to redress the inequalities of the bail system,
affect the administration of justice? Specifically, do they lessen the
barriers to justice often faced by poor and minority defendants? Ursula
Castellano's ethnographic study of three pretrial release programs
reveals the often unintended consequences of incorporating social
service nonprofits in the criminal court process.
Castellano explores the intimate workings of pretrial release programs
to show how contract caseworkers now play a critical role at nearly
every stage of the criminal justice process—and also how
well-intentioned nonprofits can end up compromising the traditional
adversarial legal process in the name of treatment, sometimes in ways
that are detrimental for defendants. In the process, she raises new
questions about the increasing involvement of nonprofits in the
operation of government.
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"An important contribution to our discussions of the practical meaning
of the term ‘criminal justice’ in the contemporary US."—Gale Miller,
Marquette University
"A thought-provoking look at the early stages of the criminal justice
process... Castellano aptly shows how pretrial release decisions—even
ones designed to keep defendants out of jails—could lead to a more
expanded form of social control."—Leslie Paik, The City College of the
City University of New York
