Rehabilitation as Rhetoric

Abstract

This article reports on a set of findings from an ethnographic research project conducted in a parole field office in central California, specifically addressing how the notion of rehabilitation is expressed in parole discourse and practices. It appears that while the agency (and its field agents) still espouse the validity of normalization and reformative goals in this arm of corrections, the resources and commitment to carry out those aims are in short supply. Consequently, agency actors appear to have constructed the parolee subject as one who is dispositionally flawed, and who is ultimately responsible for his own improvement. The findings are discussed in relation to Simon's (1993) analysis of the agency's struggle to construct a plausible account of parole's purpose in the face of shifting structural, political, and institutional demands.