Burns2018

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Burns2018
BibType ARTICLE
Key Burns2018
Author(s) Stacy Lee Burns
Title “They sacrificed...for us, we need to give them a helping hand now”: Local reasoning in Combat Veteran’s Court
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Court, Combat, Military
Publisher
Year 2018
Language English
City
Month
Journal Ethnographic Studies
Volume 15
Number
Pages 106–121
URL Link
DOI 10.5281/zenodo.1475797
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This study focuses on local reasoning in Combat Veteran’s Court in terms of its combat veteran clientele. The perceived nature of the client-defendants as victim/offenders who have paid a great price to protect us all and whose combat service is directly related to their criminality significantly alters the moral calculus in the court. This altered moral calculus finds its way into the institutional encounters ad hoc, in the local relevancies, particulars, and contingencies of the case-at-hand, and in the prospects for ‘what can happen’, given what has already occurred. Combat Veteran’s Court is working out the fundamental terms of moral identity ad hoc, in the circumstantiality of the case as it presents itself now. This work moves social control away from the punitive approach of traditional criminal courts, or the abstinence-or-punishment approach of most other problem-solving courts, and toward an approach that is unique to combat veterans. The court’s accomplishment of its unique operation is an analyzable achievement, and Garfinkel’s ‘unique adequacy requirement of methods’ is fleshed out in relation to the materials under investigation.

Notes