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In theory, a culture of control (Garland 2001) has led to the emergence of privatized-third sector-organizations premised on cost-efficiency and preventive crime control. In this case study of a for-profit violence preven-tion group home for impoverished youth in the southwestern United States, I show how a variety of what I call slumcare practices, including keeping kids for profit, are cost prohibitive and harmful for Indigenous youth. Ad-ditionally, this study uses critical realist grounded theory methods to develop a theory of public service corruption that can account for inconsistencies between policy and practice within the neoliberal state and its expanding juvenile crime control industry.
IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY-IN BOTH THE UNITED STATES and the United Kingdom-the progressive state provided healthcare for the poor, rehabilitation for the incarcerated, and education for the general public in the name of social welfare. Toward the end of the century, however, the neoliberal state began to hand these tasks over to private enti-ties that compete for contracts and limited funding sources in the name of cost-efficiency (Garland 2001, Miller & Rose 2008, Simon 2007). As the public sphere was opened to the free market, we-wittingly or not-have entrusted these private organizations to produce public goods and provide public services.
In the realm of criminal justice, Garland (2001, 170) argues that these shifts in responsibility have led to the emergence of a "third 'governmental' sector." Positioned "between the state and civil society," this third sector is composed of diverse private actors-including for-profit, non-profit, and charitable-who have taken on the responsibility of crime control "at a dis-tance" from the state (Garland 2001, 170; see also Garland 1996, Tomczak & Thompson 2019). This "responsibilization strategy" has been viewed as a "new mode of exercising power" that activates the crime prevention capacity of the private sector while extending the crime control reach of the state (Garland 1996,452-454). Consequently, the infusion ofmarket-based logics into crime control has helped produce a growing industry that promises to "minimize costs and maximize security" (Garland 2001, 175; see also Feeley & Simon 1992).
In this case study of a for-profit violence prevention group home for adolescent males in the southwestern United States, I show how an attempt to merge market-based logics with a therapeutic logic of care has...