Abstract
In this article, I examine Bruce Arrigo’s target article and the implications of his thesis that the mental health and criminal justice systems marginalize vulnerable individuals through a variety of symbolic and discursive practices. In particular, I direct my attention to the problem of value pluralism and how it can create problems communicating across different moral communities. I apply the insights of relational ethics and the concept of moral acquaintanceship in an attempt to bridge this gap. I then discuss the implications of this framework for Arrigo’s thesis and a story written by Amy Johnson describing the devastating effects of abuse, racism, and illness on a person of color.
Introduction
Bruce Arrigo (2013) has written an insightful, innovative, and important article about the philosophies that underpin current mental health and criminal justice systems. In particular, he questions the degree to which both systems focus on risk management and, in the process, construct destructive ways of representing offenders, practitioners, and other participants. Our view of criminal activity, how it is constituted, what it tells us abut the nature of offenders and ourselves, and the purpose of intervention all spring from our particular representations of crime. By viewing offenders as essentially bearers of risk, as problems to be managed, controlled, or even quarantined, we are under the spell of a contestable, and specific, picture of crime and offenders. According to Arrigo, the roles of the kept (offenders, patients), keepers (mental and correctional staff), regulators (administrators, policy and legal monitors), and watchers (general pubic) are causally linked and reinforced through a combination of discursive and material practices. The crucial issue is that the relationship between these various roles creates a society of captives, that is, a system of negative representations and related practices that reinforce, and in a sense constitute, offenders and their potential for risk. Arrigo suggests that by understanding how these factors dynamically interact to produce crime (and mental illness), and its associated institutions and their practices, it may be possible to open up a conceptual space for considering alternative ways of dealing with atypical human behavior. It is apparent that Arrigo’s wide-ranging analysis has significant epistemological, economic, social, cultural, psychological, and ethical strands to it. Its complexity is challenging.
In her article, Amy Johnson (2013) describes the effects of incest, physical abuse, neglect, illness, and racism on a developing child in an indifferent world. In her account, workers in the mental health and criminal justice systems consistently fail to recognize and acknowledge the experiences and perspective of an abused and unfairly maligned person of color. What is particularly striking is the absence of empathy and caring toward a vulnerable person by professionals. It is as if the salient features of her life are overlooked, and the person they conceptualize and respond to is one they have constructed; a form of ethical blindness. What I mean by this is that the actions of each of the major protagonists in the story are guided by their cognitive representations, which in turn are shaped by their professional and personal backgrounds. Furthermore, their understanding of patients and potential offenders risk partly constitutes that risk, that is, creates the very thing they are concerned about. There is an interrelated network of categories and social events that help to fashion and maintain unjust situations.
The Arrigo target article provides a theoretical lens with which to understand the events in Amy Johnson’s story. It is a rich source of ideas concerning atypical human behavior and its constitution, and clarifies the relationships between individuals’ representations of persons and events, and social tragedies such as abuse, mental illness, and crime. Indeed, there is so much interesting content in the article that I cannot possibly discuss all of its ideas and will focus my attention on its ethical implications. Although I touch on issues of mental health, my primary stress will be on the criminal justice and correctional systems.
Some Emergent Themes
The target article by Bruce Arrigo and Amy Johnson’s case study draw attention to the problem of moral pluralism and its practice challenges, albeit in distinctive ways. For Arrigo, the problems associated with moral pluralism derive from his apparent epistemological position of post-modernism, and his argument that there are varying ways to represent crime and its associated agencies and actors, all possessing prima facie legitimacy. However, he is critical of the way traditional models of rehabilitation effectively close down the possibility of a fruitful dialogue concerning the nature of crime and offenders, and the most ethically acceptable way of approaching (for want of a better term) its management. In her story, Amy Johnson speaks powerfully of the lack of acknowledgment by criminal justice and mental health personnel of her vulnerabilities and their failure to treat her with respect. Her description of being physically subdued while experiencing posttraumatic symptoms is deeply moving, and disturbing. In my view, the reasons for the moral and epistemological failure of practitioners to respond appropriately to her distress reside partly in their individual and professional moral codes. In essence, they are looking past her and do not fully grasp her status as a moral equal and as someone who requires an empathic and healing response—essentially what has been termed moral repair (Walker, 2006). They are preoccupied with conducting “business as usual” and are morally blind to the salient features of her unique life story and current situation.
Value Pluralism
We live in an ethically complex world, and this complexity is further magnified in criminal justice and mental health contexts. In addition to their allegiances to varying moral communities, individuals have a variety of political, religious, and ethnic commitments, all normatively laden. These content-rich systems of moral beliefs and procedures tell people how to act, what to believe in, and what shape a “good life” ought to take. Moreover, within the criminal justice and correctional systems, there are the additional normative assumptions that undergird situations involved in the implementation of state-endorsed sanctions, that is, punishment. Punishment and its justification are issues that all correctional workers are influenced by, and in turn ought to ethically reflect on. In particular, it has been argued that some aspects of offender treatment resemble punishment more than traditional mental health treatment and, as such, ought to be the explicit focus of ethical attention (Ward & Salmon, 2009).
Looking more carefully at theories of offender rehabilitation, it is apparent that moral beliefs provide the rationale for a number of practitioners’ assessment and treatment-related activities. For example, according to the Risk–Need–Responsivity (RNR) model (Andrews & Bonta, 2010), correctional treatment programs should preferentially target offenders who are evaluated to be high risk because this is the best (value judgment) way to allocate scarce resources and will also result in greater benefits to the community (i.e., harm reduction—moral aim). The RNR also recommends that programs be orientated around what have been called criminogenic needs (i.e., dynamic risk factors) as opposed to features of offenders that are statistically unrelated to reoffending (moral aim). In short, the overriding goal of correctional treatment is to lower recidivism rates, and questions concerning offenders’ well-being or agency are viewed as of secondary importance. In contrast, strength-based rehabilitation programs are underpinned by a distinct set of moral norms (Ward & Maruna, 2007)—ones that seek to enhance the quality of offenders’ lives as well as protect the community from the threat of further crimes. Ward and his colleagues have argued that human rights norms and the concept of dignity obligate practitioners to provide the resources to enable offenders to meet their basic needs and strengthen their capacity to pursue meaningful and prosocial lives (Ward & Birgden, 2007). The values associated with strength-oriented rehabilitation programs are therefore a mixture of prudential and moral norms. The actual content of offenders’ good lives plans will vary depending on their preexisting commitments and priorities. What this means in practice is that each plan is likely to contain overlapping, but possibly incommensurate, value systems that translate different personal, cultural, religious, and political norms into plans for living.
Value Pluralism and Practice
What are the practice implications of the value pluralism outlined above? One obvious issue is that norms infuse all aspects of the criminal justice and correctional systems from policy initiatives to the nature of punishment to the content of each offender’s intervention plan. Furthermore, there is the possibility of incommensurability between the correctional and criminal justice institutions at a multitude of levels. For example, the norms governing the actions of a correctional system (typically, the humane implementation of punishment and protection of the community) may conflict with those of health practitioners (to enhance individual well-being). To make matters worse, each practitioner may experience internal value conflicts because of their allegiances to different roles and their associated codes of conduct. Thus, a correctional psychologist is an employee of the criminal justice system and therefore subject to its code of conduct while also being obligated to meet the standards of his or her professional ethical code. The difficulty is that these sets of norms and their associated standards of conduct could conflict and in fact may not be easily reconciled. This is what has been termed the dual relationship problem in the realm of forensic and correctional mental health (Adshead & Sarkar, 2005). The scope of normative conflicts extends much further and potentially includes that between offenders’ implicit life plans and police, prison officers, probation officers, mental health workers, and therapists’ ethical codes. As described in Amy’s story, this was certainly a problem for her. Amy’s concerns are to ease her suffering and to establish genuine and caring relationships with other people. She does not view herself primarily as a patient or offender; these are identities imposed on her by professionals. The problem of incommensurability, or conflict between different sets of moral systems, goes much deeper than that between different moral judgments and their respective actions. It is also evident at the level of moral justification: Individuals who possess different sets of moral norms are likely to justify their moral judgments by appealing to foundational principles, within their moral system. Thus, there is the real danger that people acting within the normative structure of distinct moral codes will talk past each other, and believe others are guilty of irrationality and moral capriciousness. This problem could even occur within a single practitioner or correctional worker who is subject to the standards of two or more codes. From the perspective of the society-of-captives thesis, this is not merely a problem of not listening carefully enough to what someone else is trying to communicate. It is no mere lapse of concentration. Rather, the problem has its origins in the multiple systems of meaning, and their associated practices, that regulate the actions of criminal justice, health workers, and all members of a society.
While Arrigo outlines the problems of moral pluralism well and does stress the importance of taking into account a variety of voices, especially those who are on the receiving end of the criminal justice system, he does not spell out ways of achieving this goal. His analysis points to the socially constructed nature of crime/mental illness and reveals that there are other ways of understanding atypical human behavior. However, amid the clamor of multiple voices, it is not clear whether it is even possible to reach agreement on what constitutes an ethical problem, let alone arrive at a consensus concerning justified moral action.
Although I do not have the space to venture into metaethics, I do think that a minimal realism concerning the facts of human existence (i.e., we are vulnerable social animals who share a set of basic needs) and some ethical assumptions are warranted to address the problem of conflicting moral viewpoints. More specifically, I assume that (a) all human beings are naturally motivated to seek a number of primary goods, including food, shelter, security, control, and relatedness; (b) all human beings have intrinsic value and possess the same (high) level of moral status (This equal moral status should give them an equal say concerning matters that affect their lives); (c) norms are cognitive and social tools that create cooperative structures that enable people to achieve these goods within a social context; (d) there are diverse, equally legitimate, ways of arranging our lives that enable us to live cooperatively and to achieve acceptable levels of well-being; (e) these different ways of living are associated with distinct sets of moral norms, or codes; and (f) we ought to seek common ground when faced with moral problems and make a genuine effort to reach an agreement about how best to act, on the basis of good reasons. At all times, the search for agreement concerning ethical problems needs to take into account our equal moral status, and be respectful of our social, cultural, and religious differences—that is, our varying ethical codes.
Moral Acquaintances
Keeping these assumptions in mind, one possible way forward is to adopt a moral acquaintance procedure and the relational framework values of engagement, respect, and embodiment (Bergum & Dossetor, 2005; Hanson, 2009; Luban, 2007; Ward, 2011). In my view, this set of values and procedures resonates well with both Arrigo’s overall society-of-captives argument and Amy Johnson’s account of her personal experiences in the criminal justice and mental health systems.
In a complex moral world with diverse ethical codes and cultural perspectives, it is important to attend carefully to our concrete relationships with other people and to engage in dialogues that are open and intent on incorporating varying viewpoints. In other words, ethical focus should be on relationships as well as principles and norms such as rights and duties. Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge the dignity of others, and not to act in ways that are disrespectful and that denigrate their status as fellow human beings. Finally, the details or stories of individuals’ lives ought to be the focus of moral decisions rather than simply abstract principles or norms. We need to work hard to construct personal narratives (an embodiment of their situation in a story) of each person involved in an ethically problematic situation and depict the relevant details such as what is at stake for them in an encounter.
The moral acquaintance framework accepts that in a pluralistic society, there are a number of equally legitimate, competing or alternative moral belief systems. The application of these different moral codes to concrete situations often results in varying responses to ethical problems. A moral acquaintance framework accepts that individuals with distinct moral codes may judge moral situations differently, and in turn justify their actions by appealing to competing sets of principles and theories, for example, religious beliefs, political theories, or codes of ethics. In effect, such individuals are moral strangers to each other as they have little in common with respect to their core moral beliefs and their underlying principles. They frame problems differently and, as a result, may arrive at diverse judgments concerning the right course of action to take.
In contrast, moral acquaintances have some overlapping beliefs relating to the problem in question; they are not total strangers and can arrive at common decisions about how best to act. These overlapping beliefs may be based on a shared understanding of human nature and conditions or be oriented around a specific issue, for example, the need to protect the community from predation, or the rights of offenders to receive educational or vocational training. Moral acquaintances look for common, or overlapping, moral beliefs relating to a particular issue, and view any actions proceeding from these common beliefs as justified if they are embedded within a coherent moral system and if an individual with a different set of moral beliefs agrees that their moral system is coherent. For example, one forensic practitioner might justify the implementation of treatment programs with offenders because of their beneficial effect on reoffending rates. The underlying principle appealed to concerns an obligation to protect the community from the harmful actions of offenders. However, another forensic practitioner might argue that offenders ought to receive treatment because they have pressing psychological needs. This justification could have its grounding in human rights principles rather than community protection concerns. However, despite working from distinct—and equally coherent—ethical systems, the two forensic practitioners might share a common moral belief that if a certain course of action can reduce human suffering without resulting in unjustified pain to others, it ought to be undertaken. In the example being discussed here, a treatment approach that set out to assist offenders improve their quality of life by equipping them with the skills to mange their moods effectively could also reduce their risk of offending. The two forensic practitioners are moral acquaintances—rather than strangers—by virtue of the fact that they share some moral beliefs that are directly linked to the issue in question: whether or not to fund programs for offenders. They justify the decision to fund such programs by recourse to different moral principles and theories. They are acquaintances not strangers on this issue, but they are not moral friends either as they do not share the same set of moral beliefs concerning the role of programs in the criminal justice system or, more broadly, the status of offenders and their entitlements. They accept that each other’s decision to fund programs is based on good reasons, within a coherent moral system, although they do not subscribe each others’ particular moral system.
Moral Acquaintances and the Society of Captives
I will now make a few, brief observations about the implications of these ideas for Arrigo’s key thesis and Amy Johnson’s story. First, the moral acquaintance/relational ethical framework can accommodate moral (and epistemological) pluralism. It accepts that in a complex, multicultural society, a large number of different moral codes exist, all linked to their own social and cultural norms and practices, which function to maintain them. Moreover, it will often be the case that individuals belong to a number of, possibly quite distinct, moral communities. For example, a psychologist while being subject to the norms regulating his or her role as mental health professional could also belong to a religious group, be politically active in green politics, and be a dedicated criminal justice employee. There may be little overlap between the sets of norms regulating each role he or she engaged in. The basic values of respect, engagement, and embodiment, in conjunction with the concept of moral acquaintance, should ensure that individuals accept the reality of pluralism and appreciate the equal moral status of those holding different views. In the case of vulnerable individuals, there will be an active attempt to acknowledge the unique value of their experiences, and to grasp that there are different identities and realities at stake in any subsequent interaction.
Second, the moral acquaintance procedure points to a way of bridging the conceptual gap between people with distinct moral perspectives. A first step is to develop an understanding of each person’s unique story and its contribution to the ethical problem at hand. The core relational values ensure that respect is present and there is no attempt to humiliate individuals by ignoring their experiences and views. Once the unique situation has been richly described and the acquaintance group defined (i.e., those actively involved in the problem under consideration, for example, a patient, mental health workers, and family), there is a search for common moral beliefs—norms that each actor shares. The identification of shared moral beliefs is likely to suggest courses of action that each member of the acquaintance group will accept. For example, in Amy’s story, mental health workers and Amy will agree that psychological recovery is something they both endorse and that a way to promote this outcome could be to approach her with more sensitivity when she is experiencing traumatic symptoms. While justification for this course of action may vary—for the health workers, it is about prompting patient beneficence or well-being, while for Amy it is also about autonomy or agency—each can appeal to foundational principles to support the proposed actions. In the case of crime prevention, reducing the risk for reoffending could involve the design of a plan for a better life for an offender, if this can be shown to weaken his or her array of criminogenic needs (i.e., dynamic risk factors). This would be justified within a criminal justice code of ethics by its promotion of community safety and by an offender because it will increase his or her chances of living a meaningful and happy life. The shared commitment to equipping the offender with psychological and social resource safety is justified by appealing to different moral principles.
Finally, the moral acquaintance procedure, in conjunction with the core relational values, can assist individuals to resolve dual relationship issues or more general normative conflicts. A criminal justice or mental health practitioner may find it difficult to reconcile his or her endorsement of norms of justice and the need to ensure offenders in treatment are accountable for their actions, while also attempting to treat their mental health needs. The conflict has its origins in an allegiance to different sets of norms or moral codes that only partially overlap. A moral acquaintance perspective applied to the case of an individual person stipulates that once the facts of the case have been richly described, the practitioner should look for areas of agreement between the two (or even more) sets of norms. A point of agreement may be found in the concept of human dignity and the fact that the protection of peoples’ dignity requires avoiding humiliation and taking their interests seriously. Once the norms associated with human dignity have been specified in detail (i.e., applied to a specific situation through consideration of its how, where, why, and whom aspects), it might be possible to discover a common set of moral beliefs—for example, making sure that any restrictions on patients or offenders are the minimal required by the situation and looking to enhance their sense of agency whenever possible. Failure to arrive at a common set of beliefs and a course of action that is justified within both sets of norms would constitute an ethical failure from one perspective or the other. While at times this may well be inevitable, active attempts to look for areas of overlap represent ethical good faith and recognition of the equal moral status of all the actors involved.
Conclusion
In this article, I have commented on some aspects of Bruce Arrigo’s fascinating article on the marginalization of individuals who are vulnerable and act in normatively atypical ways, and also on Amy Johnson’s story. In particular, I have concentrated my remarks on the issue of moral pluralism and the tendency in concrete situations for mental health, criminal justice, offenders, and patients to misunderstand each other’s viewpoints. While acknowledging the complexity generated by moral pluralism, I have suggested that the concept of moral acquaintance, and the relational values of respect, engagement, and embodiment, could lead to actions that agents with varying moral codes agree are justified.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.