‘I Have Different Goals Than you, we Can’t be a Team': Navigating the Tensions of a Courtroom Workgroup in a Prostitution Diversion Program

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study explores how professional stakeholders navigate individual and institutional goals, ethical standards, and perspectives within the courtroom workgroup of a prostitution diversion program. We draw from semi-structured qualitative interviews of current and/or past professional stakeholders (N = 22) and past program participants (N = 3). Though collaboration and consensus building among workgroups is a core tenet of problem-solving courts, findings from this study reflect a more complicated landscape. Respondent interviews illustrate the centrality of collaboration and role blurring; the necessity of reciprocity and balance in the team; challenges of role delineation; diversity in understandings about acceptable professional behaviour; and the protective techniques some stakeholders use to shield current and future participants from harm. Findings emphasise that while prostitution diversion programs are often seen as the least bad of several suboptimal options, stakeholders must balance their personal and professional ethics, expectations, and goals often without guidance in order to provide services and support to participants therein.