Bureaucratic Co-Optation of Informal Dispute Processing: Social Control as an Effect of Inmate Grievance Policy

Drawing our conceptualization from the policy sciences and employing qualitative methods, we analyze the adoption and implementation of a specific, informal dispute resolution mechanism—a state's inmate grievance procedure. Specifically, we establish that the state's Department of Corrections is able to subvert the original intent of an inmate grievance procedure and co-opt it to serve bureaucratic control purposes. Prisoner and judicial interests, evident in the adoption process, are eliminated in the implementation stage. Broadly, this research suggests that organizational setting is an important dimension for assessing what forms of dispute resolution can be constructed and implemented with effectiveness. Informal procedures housed totally within the confines of public bureaucracies and adopted as reforms to enforce clients' rights may be transformed, through implementation, into sophisticated control mechanisms serving only bureaucratic interests. Finally, the study demonstrates why powerless people, particularly inmates, express a preference for formal, legal mechanisms to address their grievances.