A multi-field logics approach to theorizing relationships between healthcare and criminal justice

Why are some social issues deemed social problems while others are not and how is responsibility for social problems allocated across fields? What social forces determine whether drug use during pregnancy, for example, is designated as criminality rather than illness? How does contacting the police affect patient trust and providers’ roles? This chapter draws from field and institutional logics theory to examine how inter-field relationships shape the ways social problems are defined and addressed. Drawing on examples primarily from U.S. healthcare and criminal justice, we demonstrate how five field-level processes-encroachment, channeling, buffering, cooperation, and competition-shape where social problems are located within interinstitutional fields and how their meanings change as they traverse field boundaries. At the heart of our analysis is a focus on how field-level power shapes the construction of social problems, a consideration that offers promising implications for scholars working at the intersection of law and medicine.