Centering Decarceration Principles In the Implementation of a Behavioral Health Screening Technology In Probation

Background: Long-standing policies and practices in the criminal legal system are often disconnected from existing evidence. The ontological assumptions and epistemic aims of program implementation may argue for research efforts intended to “bridge the ‘implementation gap’ between research ‘evidence’ and its adoption into [criminal legal settings]”. However, this strategy is disconnected from mounting evidence that the legal system operates as intended, to subjugate and control marginalized communities and to make complex social problems disappear. From this vantage point, policies and practices within the criminal legal system are not guided by best available evidence but are instead guided by institutional logics of surveillance, punishment, and control. This understanding – that the criminal legal system functions as intended and that the disconnect between evidence and practice serves this function – necessitates attention to axiology in program implementation. We examined axiology as a critical dimension of program implementation through a reflexive analysis of a universal behavioral health screening tool (CAT-MH) implemented in a large and complex probation system.

Method: The findings were developed through a process of collaborative reflexivity, wherein we systematically reviewed implementation protocols, individual and collective memos written during the implementation process, reviewed CAT-MH administrative data, and facilitated in-depth conversations about the possibilities and limitations of universal screening for decarceration (D’Cruz et al., 2007; D’Cruz & Gillingham, 2017). While constructing our interpretation, we noticed our emerging reflection had temporal and thematic dimensions. For example, ethical dilemmas were clustered at specific points in the project (i.e. creation of protocols and transition to remote implementation) and around particular themes (e.g. participant agency).

Findings: We leveraged the temporal and thematic dimensions of our interpretation to construct three ethical junctures: 1) ethical concerns related to surveillance, 2) leveraging the flexibility of the CAT-MH, 3) actively engaging clients as stakeholders. Our findings demonstrate that the implementation of the CAT-MH in a large probation department was not simply a means of conveying information in a value-neutral setting; rather, the project necessarily involved navigating ethical junctures identified by using decarceration principles. These ethical junctures emphasize axiology as a critical, though underacknowledged, dimension of program implementation and provide a practical blueprint for how existing implementation frameworks can be grounded by ethical principles, in this case the principles of decarceration. We illustrated the ethical junctures temporally: The first consisted of relationship building and boundary setting between systems, the second shifted toward remote implementation, and the third focused on engaging clients as stakeholders.

Conclusion: Across these ethical junctures was an emphasis on providing increased access to behavioral health services while upholding clients’ protection from punishment, and self-determination. Through navigating these ethical junctures, we found ways to safeguard data results from individual probation officers and the probation department, ensuring that clients could voluntarily access community-based services outside the scope of probation and of their own volition. All key stakeholders shared the goal of increasing access to behavioral health services. However, this approach to universal behavioral health screening and service access was, at times, at odds with the carceral logics of the APD.