The role community practitioners play in lower criminal courts has traditionally been overlooked in the socio-legal literature. In this article, I analyse how they use discretion and contribute to courts' knowledge about and understanding of the problems clients (the accused) face. I focus on how they manoeuvre the courts, offering supports, service or housing; 'vouching' for or documenting progress, good character, compliance and potential; or educating judicial actors about social context, or therapeutic perspectives around mental health, substance use or trauma. I advance understandings of how nonjustice actors interpret and use risk logics, while contributing medical, cultural and sociological knowledge that can improve practices in lower criminal courts, particularly by destabilizing assumptions about criminogenic risk management, poverty and choice.

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Youth without housing experience more regulation and conflict with criminal justice than their housed counterparts. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with fifty-one young people, we focus on how efforts to move away from homelessness towards long-term housing stability are impacted by conflict with law, a term referring to a broad range of experiences with various authorities in the legal system, social services, shelters, etc. Our paper comes out of a yearlong longitudinal study of the factors and processes affecting the transition away from youth homelessness in Toronto and Halifax. We consider practical barriers generated by conflict with law, but also the role that it can play in shaping the identity processes at the heart of successful transitions. Our findings highlight how conflict with law and regulation-even occurring before and during homelessness-has serious repercussions for young people well after they have left the streets.