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Beyond Adversarialism?: Collaboration and Therapeutic Goals

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Therapeutic Justice

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Abstract

This chapter examines the theory of therapeutic jurisprudence and highlights the centrality of this orientation for MHCs. I outline the major paradigm shifts characteristic of MHCs—treatment orientation and collaboration and describe my formulation of “therapeutic justice.” I detail the mission of MHCs and the changes in court structure and culture, noting how a treatment orientation works in practice of a less adversarial model of criminal justice. In the chapter, I show that net-widening does occur in the case of MHCs—expanding the number of individuals under the control of the criminal justice system and the intensity and severity of criminal justice intervention—resulting in offenders becoming entangled in wider, stronger and denser nets. The chapters ends by revisiting the court’s mission.

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  1. Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA, USA

    Karen A. Snedker

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  1. Karen A. Snedker
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Correspondence to Karen A. Snedker .

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Snedker, K.A. (2018). Beyond Adversarialism?: Collaboration and Therapeutic Goals. In: Therapeutic Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78902-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78902-6_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78901-9

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