Hmm, well, you can't treat a string as a hash or an array as a hash or a hash as an array

You can use eval to trap errors, ref to interrogate values to see what kind of reference they are, or Data::Diver which combines both, Re: Parsing SOAP::Lite results (with Data::Diver)

use strict;
use warnings;
use JSON qw/ encode_json decode_json /;

my $json = <<'__JSON__';
{
   "fields" : {
      "customfield_11872" : [
         {
            "name" : "0.0.0.0",
            "self" : "https://localhost.com:8080/rest/api/2/version/35
+372",
            "released" : false,
            "id" : "35372",
            "archived" : false,
            "description" : "Null version. May be deleted after other 
+conforming versions are created"
         }
      ]
   }
}
__JSON__


my $decoded_json = decode_json( $json );

print $decoded_json->{'fields'}{'customfield_11872'}[0]{'name'}, "\n";

use Data::Diver qw/ Dive /;
if( my $toyArrRef = Dive $decoded_json, qw/ fields customfield_11872 /
+ ){
    for my $toy ( @{ $toyArrRef  } ){
        if( my $name = Dive $toy, qw/ name / ){
            print "Name is $name\n";
        }
    }
}


__END__
0.0.0.0
Name is 0.0.0.0
[download]