- Title
- Case management in youth desistance: a governmentality approach
- Creator
- McGregor, Joel Robert
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- This thesis seeks to uncover the ways in which case management and diversionary programs come together as a practice that is applied in the youth justice setting. Case management popularised in Australia in the 1970s and, since then, has increasingly been employed within Australian corrections agencies. It has been promoted as a method of service delivery which meets the needs of the offender in a cost-effective and efficient manner. This thesis will critically engage with the rationalities that govern this practice to suggest how they influence the key service dimensions that serve to govern young people’s desistance pathways. In this thesis I argue that youth case management and diversionary programs come together through complex relational practices. Case management and diversionary programs comprise various types of practitioners from different disciplinary backgrounds. Examples of such are youth workers, social workers and human service practitioners. As a result, and what this thesis has uncovered, the practice of case management has diverse delivery approaches and does not follow a single method of service delivery. While this diversity contributes to the richness of case management and diversionary programs, it has also meant that many of the ethical considerations when working with young people desisting from crime have been relocated to this setting with little critical reflection. In particular, this thesis seeks to understand how practitioners do case management through their own subjectivities and the subjectivities that they imagine of their clients. It will argue that, in managing ‘problem populations’, practitioners drew upon their personal understandings of young people to undertake their work rather than through the practices for working with post-release young people which were institutionally recognised. Approaching their work in this way allowed practitioners to strategically negotiate relations between, for example, themselves and the funding body, and themselves and their clients. In order to examine that which has been stated above, and the research aims, this thesis will draw upon the work of Michel Foucault and the field of governmentality studies. Applying this theoretical framework to the qualitative methods used and analysis of data, this thesis will uncover the techniques which come together to form a distinct exercise of governmentality. Specifically, it seeks to uncover the relations of power that come together to form the day-to-day working practices of case managers.
- Subject
- custody; crime; youth; reintegration; governmentality; Foucault
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1406309
- Identifier
- uon:35615
- Rights
- Copyright 2019 Joel Robert McGregor
- Language
- eng
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| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 269 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |