Compromised care in carceral/therapeutic institutions

Is institutional care a contradiction in terms? Can a corrections officer genuinely care for incarcerated people, or a judge care for the defendant sitting in the courtroom, given the power imbalance and latent violence woven into those relations? A dominant anthropological perspective would regard care as impossible in the social transactions that typify life inside powerful state institutions. This chapter, however, questions the dominant perspective and explores what species of care can emerge within a controlling and punitive state apparatus. It draws on ethnographic research in a criminal court aimed at diverting people with severe mental illness away from jail. The chapter explores the processes of choosing defendants to enter the court, shaping their subjectivity, and responding to their needs. The details of this ethnographic case study from a single courtroom build up a general definition of institutional care as (1) compromised by definition and (2) enabled, not excluded, by the operation of state power.