The construction and stewardship of responsible yet precarious subjects: Punitive ideology, rehabilitation, and ‘tough love’ among parole personnel

Abstract

This article examines how the diverse goals (promoting public safety, rehabilitation, and reentry) of the California parole agency function collectively, focusing on how field agents and supervisors make sense of and instantiate the agency’s mission. While these goals display fracture and can compete, the parole system displays an incorporative capacity as field personnel integrate these elements together into what they see as a coherent project. I argue that this fusion is both made possible and structured by a ‘punitive ideology’ common among field personnel that is undergirded by the construction of paroled subjects as always precarious and as responsible for their own reformation. Following this, parole personnel privilege a ‘tough love’ approach that emphasizes surveillance, sanctioning perceived misconduct, and utilizing (or threatening to utilize) reimprisonment. Yet, rather than entailing the abandonment or delegitimation of the goal of offender assistance, this approach keeps rehabilitation – as a potentiality – present through folding it within a web of punitive regulation. While this undercuts rehabilitation and reshapes it as a mechanism for surveillance and sanctioning, parole personnel view this approach as the most effective way to promote self-betterment and steward individuals towards ‘parole success’.