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Abstract
Community is invoked as a foundational concept in restorative justice (RJ) discourse, yet its meaning is rarely examined as an object of analysis. This dissertation asks: how is "community" imagined, enacted, and mobilized in community-held restorative justice diversion (RJD) programs, and what do these enactments reveal about the possibilities and limits of RJD as an anti-racist, anti-carceral reform? Drawing on a qualitative study across nine U.S. counties, I employ semi-structured ethnographic interviews with 48 participants, including RJD practitioners and legal-system partners. Guided by the rhetorical concept of the ideograph, the study treats community as a contested political and moral term whose meanings shape program governance, eligibility criteria, referral practices, and legal systems engagement with community-based organizations. Findings reveal that community performs dual and contradictory functions: expanding care and accountability toward those most harmed by racialized criminalization, while serving as a protective boundary against co-optation. Participants distinguished being in community with legal system actors and being in relationship with them—central to sustaining community ownership under operational entanglement. A persistent alignment problem emerged: rhetorical commitment to racial equity coexists with governance arrangements that reproduce racialized gatekeeping and shift labor onto BIPOC-led organizations. Programmatic elements aimed to preserve RJ centricity against legal system capture; however, treating RJD as a dumping ground pulled CBOs across competing, albeit overlapping, demands. Practitioners framed RJD not merely as diversion, but as one strand within a broader project of community capacity-building, structural struggle, and cultural transformation. I conclude with implications for program design, policy, and future scholarship.
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