Empowerment Or Deprivation:An Analysis Of The Dilemma Of Judicial Social Work Intervening In The System Of Appropriate Adults In China

The appropriate adult system is a relatively important part of the juvenile justice system.It is the first step for the guilty of juveniles to be assisted by social forces.However,the embedding of the core concepts of judicial social work needs to overcome the resources and powers of the public,the prosecution and the law control.However,at present,due to the inherent power distribution in the development of juvenile justice in China,the intervention of judicial social work cannot accurately locate the “appropriate” position and find the “appropriate” space.This study takes C-institutions involved in the H-zone detention center’s appropriate adults to participate in service practice as a case,explaining that the professional judicial social workers embed the original juvenile justice field after the government purchase service mechanism,under the control of the original power subject in the juvenile justice field the dilemma facing.To this end,the author used the C institution as a research case to pass four months of participatory observation.During the period,the qualitative research methods such as interview method and participatory observation method were used to obtain relevant information from the public security organs,and to gain an in-depth understanding of the institutional judicial social workers.In the practice of institutional practice,and through in-depth analysis and review of qualitative data,analyze the dilemma faced by judicial social workers in intervening in this service under the unequal power relationship,from the perspective of empowerment theory from macro,meso and micro-levels specifically show the dilemmas faced by judicial social workers in the implementation of this system,and thus the interaction between the judicial social workers and the public security organs in the implementation of the system is explained in addition to the interaction between the entities and the institutional background.The service itself plays a positive role in promoting the system,and it can also find the appropriate institutional connection mechanism between different entities in the practice of the system.Therefore,the judicial social worker can obtain more practical rights in the appropriate adult service.Through research,it is found that the intervention of appropriate social participation in the judicial society is mainly faced with three difficulties: First,the legalization dilemma at the institutional text level.The implementation of the system is dominated by the public,prosecutorial and legal authorities.The effect of the actual operation of the system depends not only on the institutional text but also on the institutional practice.Due to the management system of the Chinese bureaucracy,the system itself has a certain elastic structure.The flexible use of such a system leads to the empowerment practice in the practice process becoming a denial of rights;Second,the professional dilemma at the service subject level.The influence of environmental factors in the real field has weakened the subjectivity of judicial social workers.The subordinate position of judicial social workers in the field of juvenile justice has led to the loss of the initiative of the service of the judicial society as the output of the service.Third,the multi-party role location dilemma.Judicial social work has its own institutional goals in the field of juvenile justice,and emphasizes the equality of the power relations between the two parties and the partnership-type cooperation.For the public,prosecutorial,legal power and social work institutions,the current three parties are still unable to find best space for cooperationIn short,the choice of the system in practice has formed a tacit understanding between the multiple subjects.The seemingly empowering process ultimately leads to the state of empowerment,which is currently faced by the judicial society in the field of juvenile justice.