Adjudication Under Cover: Compliance and Inequality in the Criminal Courts

Authors

• Mary Ellen Stitt, University at Albany, State University of New YorkFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2025

DOI

10.1086/733928

Abstract

State agencies tasked with governing poverty often aim to improve individuals’ social conditions by transforming their conduct. From welfare offices to prison reentry programs, those agencies work to compel behavioral changes by making the receipt of aid—or punishment— contingent on individuals’ compliance with requirements like appearances for regular appointments and negative drug test results. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a court-mandated therapeutic program, this study shows how “compliance” with standard behavioral requirements is constructed around health, financial resources, and institutional trust, with the result that the most vulnerable people are systematically marked as noncompliant and channeled towardmore punitive interventions. This sorting process helps to legitimize the inequalities it produces: by framing marginalized people as unwilling to accept help to improve themselves and their lives, agencies can justify placing them under more coercive forms of control.

Comments

This is the publisher's pdf. The version of record can be found here: Stitt, M. E. (2025). Adjudication Under Cover: Compliance and Inequality in the Criminal Courts1. American Journal of Sociology, 130(5), 1113-1149. https://doi.org/10.1086/733928

Recommended Citation

Stitt, Mary Ellen, "Adjudication Under Cover: Compliance and Inequality in the Criminal Courts" (2025). School of Criminal Justice Faculty Scholarship. 4.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/scj_fac_scholar/4