Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Purpose: The high percentage of youth with mental disorders in the juvenile justice system has fueled the integration of therapeutic practices into correctional settings (Coccoza & Showyra, 2000). Tensions between these two different paradigms- correctional and therapeutic- can be problematic and paradoxical (Abrams, Kim, & Anderson-Nathe, 2005). A wealth of research in educational anthropology has examined how youth traverse competing worlds of schools, families, and peers (Hemmings, 2006; Phelan, Davidson, & Yu, 1993). However, little is known about how youth negotiate their identities in the context of correctional/therapeutic settings. These identity negotiation processes are significant in understanding how anti-social behaviors can be reformed in these environments. This study addresses two central questions: 1) how do youth offenders experience the movement between the norms and values of their past worlds and those of the correctional world? 2) How do youth offenders negotiate their identities in the context of competing correctional/therapeutic paradigms?

Method: The first author conducted a four year ethnographic study at three correctional facilities to study the integration of correctional and therapeutic systems and processes of identity change for incarcerated juvenile males. Triangulated data collection methods included participant observations, repeated semi-structured interviews, and record reviews. For this paper, the author closely analyzed field notes from the three facilities and interview data from a sub-sample of 10 youth (out of 29) across the three facilities. All 10 youth participated in at least 4 interviews over a period of 4-7 months, including one post-release interview. Data were coded inductively across three primary categories, worlds, identities, and negotiation strategies, and multiple sub-themes. Several data display tools, such as time-ordered matrices and flow-charts, were used to look at each case and patterns between cases.

Results: The authors located several overlapping norms and values between the offenders' prior worlds and the correctional worlds, such as fighting, hierarchy, power struggles, and masculinities. However, some of the therapeutic aspects of the correctional world tended to challenge their prior values and their professed identities. For example, treatment discourses promoted the view of a criminal as a “weak”, rather than as a source of power; gang identities were recast as “negative” rather than “necessary.” Processes of youth negotiation to these challenges to previously professed identity included manipulation, dicsounting, struggling, and buying into to new identities. Youth in the study who were able to accept, even partially, these treatment identities were more apt to envision a different future, which constitutes an initial step toward behavior change (Stein & Markus, 1996).

Implications: In the current policy climate, requirements for program accountability with troubled youth lead researchers to look mainly at outcomes rather than processes. Yet examining the internal experiences of social work clients is relevant to understanding how people actually change—and subsequently, how programs “work.” This study is the first to explore in depth how youth negotiate their identities in correctional facilities in the context of competing correctional and therapeutic paradigms. Several key implications for practice with incarcerated and institutionalized youth stem from a close examination of these processes.