When Less Means More: An Analysis of Destructuring in Criminal Justice

Stanley Cohen recently proposed a wide-ranging analysis of the phenomenon of net-widening that has been the apparent result of attempts to reduce the scope of the formal criminal justice system through such procedures as decriminalization, diversion, and deinstitutionalization. A major premise of that analysis is that net-widening is an unintended consequence of a broadly based and theoretically homogeneous “destructuring” movement. The present work argues, in contrast, that there were competing and contradictory perspectives regarding how the destructuring alternatives should be constituted. While an expansion of social control might be inconsistent with the intent of a small number of writers (primarily academics) arguing for alternatives to formal justice processing, the close examination conducted here of the theoretical premises of some of those who actually controlled such programs as diversion or deinstitutionalization suggests that net-widening is a direct consequence of how programs were initially conceived, rather than being a case of good ideas that “went astray” as they were implemented.