Finding the Root of Violent Crime: Trauma, Veterans Treatment Courts, and the Politics of Medicalizing Crime

Based on ethnographic research of a political campaign to reform criminal justice responses to the violent crime of U.S. military veterans, this talk unpacks how criminal justice policy actors engage, consume, and reshape medical knowledge for political ends. Focusing on political contestation over who specifically should be eligible for lesser sentences and rehabilitative responses, the talk shows that while medicalization solves some legitimacy problems for reformers, it simultaneously generates new knowledge and classification struggles. This underlines the fragility of medicalization processes in criminal justice institutions and raises questions about the consequences of making criminal courts key arbiters of vulnerability and recovery.