The narrative framework of psychological jurisprudence: Virtue ethics as criminal justice practice

Recently, Ward and Durrant (2021) utilized the construct of "practice frameworks" to better organize the important theoretical aspects of two major correctional interventions (i.e., Good Lives Model and Restorative Justice). This organization included the configuration of three interlinked conceptual levels that bridge ontological and epistemological gaps between core functional values, causal assumptions, and practical applications. In this paper, we employ the practice framework strategy to highlight a different way to think about forensic and correctional psychology. We explain how this alternative way advances ethical principles that reconceive the nature of offending and redirect the epistemology of offender treatment. First, we elucidate the key conceptual principles of Psychological Jurisprudence (PJ). These include the values of reciprocal consciousness, inter subjectivity, and mutual power as conceived of and developed within continental philosophy. Second, we examine the operating assumptions of PJ. These include the stipulations that: (1) the unconscious exists and it is structured much like a language; (2) subjectivity is always politicized because unconscious structured language pre-codes and prefigures conscious thought; and (3) power functions through the politics of discourse, producing circumscribed and deferred knowledge about human interrelatedness and interdependence. Third, we explain how PJ's core set of values and operating assumptions reframe the therapeutic practice of forensic and correctional psychology. This reframing radicalizes the ontology of offending and the epistemology of offender treatment. To substantiate this claim, we discuss several prevailing approaches to therapeutic practice, including the deficit-correcting (RNR), desistance-management (GLM), and normative-reconciliation (NRJ) models. Fourth, we propose alternative therapeutic practice guidelines for practitioners who work within treatment and therapy as well as recovery and reentry spaces of carceral coexistence.