Managerial Justice, Community Supervision, and Treatment Mandates: The Intersection of Clinical Practice and Social Control

Probation and parole comprise the largest arm of the US criminal legal system, supervising nearly 4.4 million individuals, or more than twice the number incarcerated in prisons and jails. Individuals under community supervision must comply with numerous requirements to remain in good standing with the legal system. Failure to comply with requirements such as drug, alcohol, and psychosocial treatment mandates can result in sanctions and/or incarceration, creating a revolving door whereby individuals circulate between community supervision, carceral facilities, and their respective systems of formal social control. This chapter frames the revolving door of community supervision as part of an emergent form of penality termed “managerial supervision.” The chapter details how changing social and economic conditions in the latter half of the twentieth century facilitated the rise of managerial supervision, and how it manifests in modern supervision systems at macro-and microlevels through treatment mandates. Used as a means to test an individual’s compliance and governability, treatment mandates imposed under managerial supervision not only frequently depart from evidence-based principles but can expose individuals to more opportunities to incur a sanction or term of incarceration. After describing these iatrogenic consequences of treatment under managerial supervision, the chapter concludes with recommendations for future research and evidence-based practice.