Privatizing Punishment

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 shows how the community-based reform movement contributes to increased privatization in the juvenile justice system. The MacArthur Foundation and Annie E. Casey Foundation are central leaders in juvenile justice policy today, controlling research, grants, and policy proposals that have coalesced around technocratic, pro-privatization approaches to reform under the mantle of the community-based reform movement. This chapter demonstrates how foundations have facilitated the antidemocratic privatization of the policymaking process, with little input from those most effected. These foundations have also encouraged substantial increases in the privatization of secure detention and other programs and services of the juvenile justice system. Privatization has introduced more juvenile justice stakeholders with interests that often run contrary to downsizing the reach of the carceral state or investing in public institutions and oversight necessary to ensure more equitable and safer outcomes for youth.