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The Bureaucratic Violence of Alternative Justice
in Conflict and Society
Author:
Amanda J. Reinke
Amanda J. Reinke
Georgia College and State University amanda.reinke@gcsu.edu
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ABSTRACT
Alternative justice—conflict resolution outside formal law—seeks to alleviate pervasive social issues, such as the school-to-prison pipeline. Alternative justice practitioners increasingly seek to transform the legal system and the violence it perpetuates from within by implementing programs and processes in collaboration with formal law and legal actors. However, this collaborative approach requires practitioners to create bureaucratic processes and procedures such as memoranda of understanding, complex filing systems, and data tracking. Multisited ethnographic research in the United States (2014-2017) reveals that there is little consensus among these practitioners as to whether this bureaucratization will benefit or harm their work. The bureaucracy of processing case work, implementing standardized procedures, extending training requirements, and cost barriers are viewed positively insofar as they gain legitimacy for the field. Is bureaucratization necessary to achieve legitimacy, or does it restrict practitioners’ ability to fulfill client needs and the principles of their justice paradigm?
Contributor Notes
AMANDA J. REINKE is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and the Paul D. Coverdell Public Policy Fellow at Georgia College and State University. She conducts ethnographic research on gender, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding amid displacement in the United States and the African Great Lakes Region. Her most recent work examines the structural and bureaucratic violence embedded within alternative justice and community peacebuilding efforts in the United States. Email: amanda.reinke@gcsu.edu