Abstract
Using fieldwork, interviews, and survey data collected from male adolescent prisoners who completed a cognitive treatment program, this study addresses two questions: how do adolescent prisoners account for past and possible future acts to illegally acquire money? What frames are identifiable across these accounts? We identify three frames in adolescent prisoner narratives: a ‘victim’; ‘rebirth/redemptive’; and ‘critical’ frame. While the first frame is used to rationalize crime, the second promises that, as changed individuals, future crime will be avoided. The third frame questions the moral and structural hierarchies that render certain groups susceptible to being labeled deviant. Drawing on narrative-identity and intersectional theory, we argue that adolescents' narratives of economic prospects change over time as a function of navigating the different strains associated with initial incarceration, enduring jail programming, and reentering communities. We argue that these changing social conditions provide the context for adolescent males to shift their accounts from ‘hegemonic’ to ‘subversive’ narratives. To conclude, we discuss the implications of study findings for research on desistance.
Introduction
Criminologists offer contrasting theories regarding how criminals view their acts. Some say offenders embrace lawlessness, viewing illegal activity as an acceptable means to achieve desired ends. Others say that offenders accept mainstream views about criminality and attempt to mitigate the shame associated with crime by neutralizing their actions through a range of justifications. Each perspective makes different assumptions about the culture of the individuals involved. The former perspective, represented by subcultural theory, suggests that crime and violence constitute dominant threads that connect the worldview, identities and self-presentations of individuals who comprise criminal subcultures (Anderson, 1999; Wolfgang and Ferracuti, 1967). Neutralization theory, which represents the latter perspective, is part of a long scholarly tradition, which examines the accounts that criminals use to explain their action. A notable work in this area by Sykes and Matza (1957) argues that offenders hold cultural views that are similar to those of law-abiding citizens. Recognizing the immorality of crime, however, offenders verbally rationalize deviance in ways that mitigate the moral force of the law and neutralize the shame associated with criminal activity (Maruna and Copes, 2005).
While this ‘either/or’ approach is prevalent in criminology, some question it by recognizing that, like all individuals, offenders try to influence how others see them, crafting their remarks for a particular setting and audience. Data neutralizing deviance are typically gathered in prisons and social services agencies, contexts where there is a strategic advantage to emphasizing the external factors that contribute to deviant acts (Sandberg, 2009). Alternatively, data supporting subculture theory are collected on the street and in criminal establishments, contexts where embracing deviant views garners social status (Anderson, 1999; Sandberg, 2009).
We agree that the context of data gathering shapes research narratives. But this methodological insight does not fully explain what we found in our investigation with incarcerated male adolescents who participated in a cognitive treatment program. Our research addresses two questions: (1) what frames do male adolescent prisoners use to account for their past and possible future acts to illegally acquire money? (2) How do we explain the diversity and conflicting nature of these accounts? To answer these questions, we talked to youth over time beginning when they were in jail and continuing after they were released but typically still on parole or waiting for a final disposition on their cases.
We identified three frames in respondents' narratives. During their initial imprisonment, respondents typically rationalized past criminality by invoking what we call a ‘victim frame’, which either assuages guilt or enables individuals to appear remorseful. After some exposure to a jail treatment program and immediately after their release, narratives shifted to fit a ‘redemptive/rebirth’ frame wherein respondents admit to wrongdoing and commit to a course of self-improvement. But once they have been back in the community for some time and confront ongoing criminal justice supervision and the difficulties of reentry, respondents articulate a ‘critical frame’ through which they question the moral hierarchies and structural arrangements that render certain groups susceptible to being labeled deviant. We argue that individual narratives of crime and economic prospects change over time as a function of navigating the different strains associated with being incarcerated, undergoing a prison treatment program, and confronting limited economic options after release from jail. Specifically, these changing social conditions provide the context for respondents to shift their accounts from ‘hegemonic’ to ‘subversive’ narratives (Ewick and Silbey, 1995).
Broadly our work falls in line with scholarship that investigates how individuals whose behavior has been criminalized view their own practices (Fader, 2013; Payne, 2008; Rios, 2011). We specifically draw on assumptions from narrative-identity and intersectionality theory to make sense of our data. We assume that the statements we gathered from respondents are accounts, a distinct genre of narrative that ‘explains unanticipated or untoward behavior’ (Scott and Lyman, 1968: 46). These accounts are part of the larger narratives that respondents tell about themselves. All personal narratives are social performances, which are interactively and strategically constructed and reflect what respondents believe is expected of them in institutions (Polletta et al., 2011). Since narratives of identity are constructed in relation to others in specific contexts, these narratives may involve diverse and contradictory representations (Gubrium and Holstein, 1998). Such a view is compatible with intersectional theory, which focuses on the complex and sometimes conflicting experiences with power and subordination that shape the lives of individuals subject to multiple forms of inequality and oppression (Crenshaw, 1994). Because intersectional identities are cut through and unstable, we should expect that individuals like the young men we studied can represent their crime and themselves in ways that are fluid, negotiable and internally contradictory as different aspects of their identities, and associated roles and actions, are called forth in particular social contexts.
Learning about adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds
We recruited a group of adolescent males, who were incarcerated at the ‘John Doe Youth Center’ (JDYC) and awaiting adjudication of arrest charges, to participate in a mixed-methods study between 2008 and 2010. Housing approximately 800 adolescents, the JDYC is one of 10 facilities that comprise a jail complex within a major urban area of the United States. Study participants were enrolled in the ‘Inner Reconstruction Project’ (IRP), a cognitive treatment program available to prisoners at the jail. The IRP accommodates approximately 316 male adolescents. (‘JDYC’, ‘IRP’, and any subsequent names used are pseudonyms.)
Separated from the ‘general population’, IRP housing areas have a dorm-like structure and common spaces to encourage positive social interaction. At the time of our research, there were six separate dorms, each holding anywhere from 30 to 50 prisoners. Group sessions, which those in the program participate in twice on each weekday, are the cornerstone of the IRP. A captain and correctional officers who have received special training in conflict resolution, anger management, group dynamics, and gang intervention implement the sessions.
This specially trained staff is also responsible for screening and admitting adolescents from other sections of the prison into the program. The screening procedures require that prisoners write an essay outlining why they would like to participate in the IRP. Once this has been done, the captain and/or a correctional officer will interview the prisoner. Depending on the prisoner's essay and responses, the staff may admit him to the program.
We conducted three waves of interviews with IRP participants and non-participant observations of IRP group sessions. The waves consisted of: (1) a baseline interview in jail; (2) an exit interview within three weeks of release; and (3) a follow-up interview within six months. A total of 250 adolescents volunteered for baseline interviews. We asked a series of open-ended questions about school and work history, family composition, and peer relationships. We also asked a series of close-ended questions relevant to the cognitive behavioral framework of the IRP program. We did not ask any questions regarding illegal activity at the request of the correctional facility legal department. In the follow-up interviews, we asked participants about their jail experience, family and peer relations since their release, their plans regarding work or school, and criminal history both before and since their detainment. The close-ended questions from the first interview were repeated.
As recording devices are prohibited in the jail, we utilized two-person interviewer note-taker teams to conduct baseline interviews. Immediately after each interview, the note-taker wrote up notes that recorded the dialogue between an interviewer and a respondent. Participants in the baseline interviews received 35 dollars in their commissary accounts. Interviews were conducted in the jail chapel while correctional officers remained outside the room. A single interviewer conducted follow-up interviews. These data were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Each of the follow-up interviews took place in a private space at our university. Following Menikoff (2001), we compensated interviewees at a rate of 10 dollars per hour, which is the hourly rate of an unskilled worker.
All study participants were apprised of their rights as research participants and completed a written informed consent form before each interview. A parental advocate was designated to monitor the protection and rights of participants. This advocate provided his ‘surrogate’ consent for study participation while respondents were incarcerated.
Of the 250 participants in our baseline interview, 124 were released back into their communities. The other 126 defendants remained under some form of penal confinement. Sixty-five (52.4 percent) community returnees were interviewed within three weeks of their release and 24 (19.4 percent) completed the last follow-up interview within six months of release. The research team was given little warning regarding a prisoner's impending release, making follow-up interviews difficult. Once we received this information, we tried to reach detainees at the phone number they initially provided. Oftentimes these numbers were no longer in service. However, the vast majority of individuals that we were able to contact completed a follow-up interview. We faced similar challenges at the six-month point.
Comparison of background characteristics across waves of data collection
Background comparison between the 250 IRP participants in the study sample and the 4443 juvenile/youthful male detainees admitted to the prison between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2010 who never participated in the IRP
Note: *p <.05; **p <.01; ***p <.001.
We also conducted non-participant observations during IRP group sessions. We spent approximately 80 hours in the field and observed 30 sessions. Observations were conducted three days a week during the summer of 2010. On most visits to the JDYC, we observed two sessions, which each lasted about one hour. The rest of the time was spent waiting for sessions, talking to correctional officers, informally chatting with prisoners, or observing them. During observations, we were permitted to use a pad and pencil to take notes. We focused primarily on the conversational aspects of sessions and attempted to create an accurate transcript of what was said. However, we also paid attention to the techniques that correctional officers used in facilitating sessions.
In making sense of our data we assume that personal narratives – that is, when individuals tell someone else what has happened to them – are a primary mechanism in the social construction and maintenance of identity or sense of self (Gubrium and Holstein, 1998). Respondents represent criminal activity, often neutralizing or redefining it, as part of the larger narratives they tell of themselves (Maruna and Copes, 2005). Because narratives are accomplished through the activities of storytelling, the resources used to tell stories, and the auspices under which stories are told, we expect that the stories individuals tell of themselves will change (Gubrium and Holstein, 1998).
Due to the volume of interview data, we used Atlas ti to analyze the open-ended responses to interview questions in four steps. In the first step, two researchers independently analyzed interviews to compile a list of topics they identified in the data. Some examples include ‘labor-market perceptions’, and ‘strategies to avoid arrest’. In step two, small segments of each interview, individual lines or paragraphs, were assigned a specific label in a process similar to open-coding. For instance, in this stage we identified labels such as ‘constraints on future success’. In the third step, we integrated the data by using the topics as conceptual containers for labeled segments, each of which could be assigned to multiple topics. Fourth, in the network view, we defined relationships between some of the labels. It was in this step that we noticed patterns in quotes that discussed past and potential criminal acts to acquire money. We isolated, recoded and selected representative quotes from this material for this manuscript.
Each observational period yielded eight to 10 pages of typed notes, which resulted in a book of field notes 278 pages in length. We then coded data based on recurrent patterns and themes (Patton, 1990). Two researchers analyzed the data and created code lists separately, which were compared. The vast majority of our categories overlapped. Discrepant categories coded to a large amount of data were preserved. A handful of discrepant categories that represented only single references in our data were discarded after discussion.
In our results, ‘CO’ refers to correctional officers, and ‘INM’ refers to prisoners. Numbers after INM indicate that different prisoners in the room are speaking.
There are limitations associated with our data. Overall, our presence undoubtedly changed the content and dynamics of group sessions. Another factor to consider is that a Caucasian male and a South Asian female conducted the observations. IRP participants were all male and predominantly African American and Latino. Correctional officers were male and female African Americans. While there is no easy way to understand exactly what influence we had, spending a considerable amount of time in the field allowed us to develop rapport with many correctional officers and prisoners.
The two researchers with some research assistants, who were a diverse group of men and women representing every major racial/ethnic group, conducted interviews. In the interviews we heard many details about personal life experiences and deviant activity. This leads us to assume that a sufficient level of rapport was established in our interviewer–interviewee interactions. However, the institutional facilities where interviews were conducted – first in jail and then at our university – may have inhibited some participants from freely and fully discussing their lives. In light of such constraints, we worked to generate rich data using an ‘active interviewing’ approach, where participants' responses to questions directed the flow of conversation (Holstein and Gubrium, 1997).
The context of early participation in the IRP: Acquiring money illegally and victim narratives
The context of early incarceration encourages victim narratives in the talk of youth in the IRP. Victim narratives are first elicited by the mechanisms through which would-be IRP participants are admitted to the program. To be admitted, detainees must write an essay requesting program entrance. The Captain who reviews IRP applicant essays told us that he admits those committed to change. Typically, however, these essays are also peppered by descriptions of victimization that applicants have suffered while housed in the general population of the jail. During one group session we observed, a correctional officer (CO) read one of these admission essays: The CO starts the session by reading an essay from an inmate who wants to get into IRP. The essay says this applicant is writing for the 3rd time to try to get into IRP. The essay writer talks about how he is getting harassed: his food is being tampered with; other inmates bang on his cell door all night to prevent him from sleeping. His girlfriend is pregnant but he can't call her because his phone pin number keeps getting stolen. The CO then says, ‘So why am I reading the letter? It helps us think about why are you in here and what you want to get out of IRP.’ The CO goes on to express sympathy for this inmate's situation, but reiterates that he also has expressed a desire to try and change it. The CO states ‘if you can't take care of yourself, who else is gonna do it?’ (Field notes, 23 August 2010)
Narratives of victimization in jail serve as a backdrop for respondents' broader accounts of turning to crime. Youth mitigate their deviant acts by articulating how the people and institutions in their lives have failed them. Some IPR participants argued that a troubled home life left them needing to financially provide for themselves. More frequently, youth reported needing money to supplement the meager income earned by family members who worked in low paying jobs or were disabled. Other respondents admitted to committing crime to acquire things they wanted but could not afford, like sneakers and cell phones. Such respondents typically argued that they engaged in criminal acts with peers either under duress or because they did not want to disappoint members of their friendship group who provided respondents with needed and desired companionship and protection. Across these various accounts, respondents explain how circumstances beyond their control help account for their criminal acts. Although COs forcefully argue that IRP participants must suspend illegal acts after their release, they recognize that the problems that youth face help explain their incarceration. The following excerpt from a group discussion illustrates: INM1: Starts talking about ‘doing the wrong things for the right reasons’. Mentions that he ended up looking after his mother and kids CO1: A 16 year old shouldn't have that kind of responsibility INM1: If you extend that, a 16 year old shouldn't get a life sentence either … CO1: You get caught doing wrong things and then what happens? Isn't it better to get$20 at a job, not$40 through crime, and avoid jail? INMs: Some say yes; some say no […] CO2: Tells a story about early friends looking ‘fly’ for a while. But in the long run, most went to prison or ended up in some kind of trouble. Then says, ‘But 30 years later, I’m looking much better. I'm a homeowner, have a car. The criminals of my neighborhood are back at ‘block 1’. I always say, there's a lot of pain in growth. We're all from the hood. I grew up in the projects. If I pulled it off, I know you can do it. Slow money, but sure money.' INM7: Our generation is different though. We have pride, need to be men INM2: It's so hard to get a job without a felony. So, how hard will it be to get a job with a felony? INM3: I believe the problem begins with the household. When your parents are strung out, or you don't have food … I needed a strong authority figure … CO1: You sound like you lived in my house. I took responsibility for myself at 12. I took myself to the doctor. I didn't have a father; I went to public school in the Bronx. No one told me I couldn't get high … INM3: You ‘womaned-up’; you took the sternness upon yourself … I have to accept what I did … CO2: Some people go through a lot of shit to get where they are … INM3: That's why this program is so good – if you think this prison shit is cool, you're bugging out … INM4: I got a family, but I like fast money; I'm addicted to money INM5: I got my GED, but what can I do now? INM6: People look at you different when you've got a record … can't get a job CO3: So, you're gonna give up? INM1: Talks about wanting 2 jobs – you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. That's life, sometimes it's a bad situation but you gotta get through. (Field notes 12 July 2010)
The change narratives sanctioned by IRP COs prompt detainees to accept some responsibility for past crimes, as evidenced by the Captain's requirement that would-be IRP participants commit to change. But COs do not allocate full responsibility to IRP participants whose circumstances are recognized as understandably associated with deviant activity. In advancing this perspective the IRP program is somewhat unique. Often in correctional group work, neutralizations are perceived as problematic and as a hindrance to achieving treatment goals (Bullock and Condry, 2013).
We believe that COs encourage a victim discourse among IRP participants in two ways. First, COs mitigate detainee responsibility by making complex arguments based on intersectional themes involving age, class, gender, and race. As the discussion quoted above developed, for instance, CO1 and CO2 each invoke themes of personal growth to argue that detainees need to mature and take care of themselves because they lack sufficient support from others. In addition to this age-related perspective, these COs bring class into the argument when they argue that if detainees want to grow up and become men, they must learn personal and fiscal responsibility demonstrated though legal employment and hard work. Detainees bring race into the discussion through counterargument. Specifically, they explain that in the neighborhoods where they live garnering respect on the street, through symbolic displays and by demonstrating toughness, was important to a minority youth's personal well-being (cf. Fader, 2013; Payne, 2008; Rios, 2011). This line of argument is implied in this discussion by INM7's remark about pride among members of his generation. (This rationale was overtly discussed in other group discussions.) Crucially, in the discussion quoted above, none of the COs present challenge this counterargument outright. In fact, in several group discussions, the COs, who are male and female African Americans, openly acknowledge that minority men and women face some unique challenges in the United States.
We believe a victim discourse among IPR participants is also encouraged by the rhetoric of IRP COs who often teach by using personal examples. Explaining that in their youth they faced similar challenges to those that detainees confront today, several COs argue that they chose a conventional path, which has yielded rewards. In proffering this perspective, IRP COs depart from typical CO behavior to express empathy for detainees (Crawley, 2004). In so doing, COs tender a modified victim frame, which argues that although detainees' difficult life circumstances mitigate the guilt associated with their past illegal activity, this must end. In the future, various COs argue, detainees must strive to address their own problems through rational action, hard work and self-care. It is clear that the IRP COs made an impression on our respondents, the majority of whom reported in our survey data that they would turn to IRP COs for advice. Although, as is to be expected, some youth challenge IRP lessons (cf. Fox, 1999), the majority of accounts gathered during early stages of detainees' imprisonment support accounts that fall into the modified victim frame supported by IRP COs.
The rebirth/redemption frame: Prison release and establishing a new life
In interviews collected immediately after their release, most respondents promoted the IRP's goals, rhetoric, and effectiveness. Respondents explain that because of the IRP, their sense of self and aspirations for the future have changed. We classify such accounts as falling into a rebirth/redemption frame (cf. Maruna and Ramsden, 2004). The context of on-going program participation and jail release, in our view, encourages such accounts. First, in the words of many respondents, participants in IRP ‘become new men’. Respondents appropriated this phrase from the IRP Captain who frequently repeated it. Several conditions of incarceration encourage respondents to interpret their experience in line with this maxim. For several IRP participants, this was the first time that they have been away from family or friends. In jail, they needed to take care of themselves by ‘watching their own backs’, looking after their belongings, and attending to their personal hygiene. Respondents further argued that they were changed people because, in the IRP, they learned to be part of a community, which required accommodating others' needs and being responsible to the group. The IRP also uses a mentor system whereby selected participants are given responsibility over others. Assuming these communal roles and responsibilities, arguably, necessitates some commitment to the associated normative behavior, attitudes, and identities (Stevens, 2012).
Release from jail also encouraged respondents to see themselves as reborn and their lives as redeemed. In the weeks after their release, nearly all IRP graduates we spoke with (95 percent) said they were ‘doing things differently in their lives’ because of the IRP. Some were still practicing IRP daily routines – rising early, keeping clean, and eating meals on a schedule – by conscious choice. This transformation, moreover, positively influenced respondents' family relations. Shortly after their return home, many IRP graduates experienced lower levels of household conflict and high levels of cohesion and trust among family members.
Against the backdrop of lessons learned, changing habits, and altered relationships, many recent IRP graduates described themselves as having a new sense of their identity and future. As Royce told us, Now I'm thinking positive. The IRP made me a better man. Without IRP I think I would have been dead by now, god bless. I think I'd have never made it if it wasn't for that. I wouldn't have made it on the streets 'cause I would have went back to the same thing if I had never went into the program. My life feels different now that I'm out and at home. Before I got released it felt like I wasn't ever coming home, 'cause when I was locked up it felt like I couldn't even picture myself getting released. I felt like I was just going to stay in jail forever. Before I went to JDYC I would describe myself as young, hot headed, and just didn't care. The change had to do with IRP and my son. (Exit interview)
Having a new, IRP-sanctioned sense of self was most apparent in participants' new commitment to finding jobs or pursuing their education so they will have greater financial opportunity. Shortly after their release, a majority of applicants told us enthusiastically about their school-related activities, plans and life goals, which they felt confident about because of the recent positive school experiences they had in the IRP. Respondents felt differently about themselves in light of their new commitment to scholastic achievement. As Luis explained, A lot of people in my neighborhood and in my family didn't accomplish school and I feel like me trying to put in the effort to accomplish a high school diploma is a good thing. I think it's on you. It's how you prepare in life and what you decide to do in life, whether you get in trouble or not. You can't blame getting in trouble on your family or the streets because the streets is gonna be there and a lot of people live in the projects and got family that they don't necessarily get along with. A lot of people get over stuff like that and don't ever get in trouble so you can't blame it on that. [Since the IRP] I'm a determined person, a new person, determined to do better, a positive minded person trying to do better so the younger kids in the community could see me do better and learn to do better, more like a role model. (Exit interview)
Beyond the obvious changes that accompany release, we believe detainees, for several reasons, could easily appropriate the rhetoric about rebirth that circulated in the IRP. Arguably, the IRP advocated a soft form of identity change that does not require detainees to eradicate their old selves, as do some criminal justice programs (Gowan and Whetstone, 2012). First, the core ideas about independence invoked by COs are prized in ‘street culture’ (Payne, 2008) and had resonance for our respondents, the majority of whom described themselves as ‘independent’ in our survey data. In the IRP, participants are taught to translate their previous conceptions of independence into a new register, one which invokes familiar age-, gender- and race-related themes. Importantly, in the IRP, participants are taught they must embrace a new sense of self or else. Those detainees who are not amenable to the idea of personal transformation are reminded on a daily basis of the likely consequences of not becoming a new person – namely, future incarceration. In fact, the specter of future punishment regularly appears amid the therapeutic messages of the IRP (cf. Gowan and Whetstone, 2012).
Second, when talking about personal transformation and the possible consequence of not becoming new men, COs prompt detainees to compare their lives to those of admirable friends and relatives who have managed to care for themselves without resorting to crime. COs, moreover, regularly challenge IRP graduates to imagine how their future acts of crime, if they did occur, would affect others. As mentioned earlier, IRP participants had to adapt to community life. The need to change for the good of the larger community, which was a prominent IRP theme, appears in the quote above from Luis. This theme is central to common-sense perception, which tasks individuals with responsible conduct for the good of the community. But the community message is personally resonant with IRP youth because it is based, in part, on a racial consciousness that detainees share with IRP COs. Specifically, racial consciousness, we assume, integrates ‘in-group identification with a set of ideas about the group's status and strategies for improving it’ (Watkins-Hayes, 2009: 288). Youth must change, in other words, because not doing so has implications for the status of members of a minority group as a whole.
When they claim to have undergone identity change shortly after their release from jail, IRP participants implicitly sign on to IRP messages, which hold youth personally responsible for success in their new lives. Respondents, however, articulate a very different narrative after spending time in the community post release.
The critical frame: Confronting the realities of community reentry
When we followed up with respondents around six months after their release from jail, we identified a third, critical frame in their narrative accounts. Several facets of post-release life encourage a critical perspective. Many respondents reported waiting for credentials, such as identification, licenses, and certificates, which they needed to re-enroll in school or to apply for work. In response to these challenges, respondents articulated a multi-faceted critique of the social conditions that got them to this point.
The first line of argument within the critical frame challenges the difference between illegal and legal means of making money. During interviews conducted more than six months after their release, some participants described all work as a ‘hustle’. In Sean's words, Interviewer: Is there anything else important about you that we should know or anything you want to tell us about yourself? Sean: I'm just a motivated person. I like money, so if I can get it the positive way, okay. Life revolves around money and I like it. Everybody hustles for money. Even YOU hustle! [Laughter] (six-month follow-up interview)
Another facet of the critical frame focuses on the difficulty of achieving financial self-sufficiency. Several months after their release, many IRP graduates argue that they cannot secure a living wage (cf. Wacquant, 2009). Some IRP graduates reported that they either could not find steady work or had already moved through several jobs since their release. As Devon said eight months after his release, ‘I applied to like 30 jobs, regular jobs, McDonald's, catering, grocery store, Toys R Us. But I have a felony so I know why 95% of those jobs are gonna be denied’ (six-month follow-up interview). In facing the reality that good jobs are scarce, IRP graduates argue that their social position, as young men seeking low skill employment in a poor economy coupled with the burden of a criminal record, affects their financial prospects and that these prospects have not improved but have worsened since their release from prison (cf. Pager and Karafin, 2009).
When describing their current predicament, IRP graduates leveled a series of critical arguments against the state for its role in creating the dim financial opportunities that they face. Some respondents were encouraged to take pleas for the crimes with which they were charged. Respondents now realize this course of action has long-term consequences for their financial prospects since it has left them with a criminal record. Speaking in monetary metaphors, they argue ‘the system got rich off of them’. They wondered why they were ‘encouraged to work inside, but couldn't work outside’. These comments infer that the state profits from arrangements that ultimately limit the chances of former prisoners to achieve financial independence.
When explaining how they had been ‘set up to fail’, some IRP graduates spoke cynically about the criminal justice system broadly. Others leveled specific critiques at the police who administer criminal justice policy because they believed that the police were rewarded according to the number of arrests that they made, and this policy was detrimental to respondents' life chances given their past criminal record. After trying to establish a new life following incarceration, many of our respondents came to argue that the criminal justice system was modeled on a zero-sum game in which the success of others was premised upon their failure.
Participants further advanced a critical perspective when they argued that the state used money in irresponsible ways that made their lives worse rather than better. Many IRP graduates spoke positively about the IRP, but the majority of the respondents believed the IRP could not prepare its graduates for life outside of jail without follow-up programming. As Jackson explained, They should have a group, like a little IRP program outside with talks about school, colleges, workplaces – the stuff that people in jail would actually need when they come out. It's like, in your mind, everything is possible. But in real life it's really not. In my mind, since I was little I said I'm going to be rich either the good way or the bad way. And in real life it's not possible unless you have certain characteristics. Like to do it the good way, I need to go through all this college, then get a good job; actually, start at the bottom of the job and move up to be rich and to live the life. And the bad way, I need to have characteristics as a person in the hood, everyone know my name, to start selling drugs, and start doing this and that, not get caught. So you're always being afraid of the police, always, you need it in your mind that you're like this. But it's not true. You need to put that effort in; but it's tough. You need help. That's real life. (six-month follow-up)
Discussion
Studies typically conceptualize delinquents' accounts of crime and desistance in categorical terms where they either embrace lawlessness through subcultural values or mitigate guilt by casting themselves as victims, and, in some cases, come to admit their past errors and pledge to undertake a new life. These narratives about criminality are typically regarded as non-overlapping perspectives. However, our findings add nuance to existing research by demonstrating that youth marshal narratives in keeping with current life circumstances, which shape distinct imaginings of economic prospects at different points in time. In jail and immediately after their release, respondents neutralize past crime or promise to avoid future criminality. After program participation, and in the context of prison release, youth see themselves as changed and ready to eschew criminal acts. Later, respondents reject and critique these same ideas.
Our findings point to several important features about narrative, which are relevant for offenders' accounts of criminality and desistance. An important literature in criminology assumes that desistance necessitates the opportunity for offenders to (re)construct an acceptable personal identity that allows a sense of purpose and growth (Morran, 2011). Others, however, remain skeptical of offenders' accounts of change, arguing that they are not to be trusted (Morran, 2011). Our work supports the former view. We do not see the changing narratives we heard as either duplicitous or as an artifact of the context of data collection. Rather, in our view, respondent narratives are shaped by the entire social organization of their telling, which includes the type of narrative being told as well as when, where, how, and why they were produced (Ewick and Silbey, 1995). We found that the social organization of the narratives we heard changed over time to elicit both hegemonic accounts (neutralizing and therapeutic) and subversive narratives. Presumably our initial interviews elicited neutralizations because we conducted interviews in jail where respondents' accounts were likely influenced by the typical narrative constraints of criminal justice settings as well as by the fact that we talked to respondents just as they gained competitive entrance to the IRP. But while the context of data collection for our second and third wave of interviews, which were conducted at our university, remained the same, the content of the accounts we heard across these interviews differed dramatically. Accounts from the second wave, which fit a rebirth/redemption frame, are still hegemonic. Despite their differences, both legal and therapeutic discourses reinforce the view that autonomous individuals can make and execute choices to change their lives (cf. Ewick and Silbey, 1995). In contrast, the accounts gathered in the third wave of data collection are subversive because they make evident how respondents' experience is directly linked to broader social conditions. Specifically, these accounts demonstrate how individual experiences are rooted in a broader cultural, material, and political world (Ewick and Silbey, 1995).
Ewick and Silbey (1995) point to two social conditions that our respondents experienced, which set the stage for the shift in their narratives from hegemonic to subversive tales. First, respondents' sense of social marginality, which increased because of incarceration, invites critique. Second, in reflecting on their experience, many respondents have come to recognize how hegemonic views are promoted while other perspectives remain unacknowledged. Tackling a seemingly hidden agenda in the criminal justice system signals the appropriateness of respondents' subversive accounts, which reflect new accounts of their diminished life chances.
Our research extends Ewick and Silbey's (1995) work by showing that the hegemonic narratives touted by the criminal justice system may be attenuated by the perspectives of criminal justice employees. Because of their age, racial, and class status, these workers may embrace the dominant message of personal responsibility taught in criminal justice interventions, while also maintaining a complex worldview based on the ways in which race, class, gender, and age combine to shape lived experience. In other words, the narratives of COs are also shaped by the entire context of their telling. The intersectional and empathetic perspectives of COs resonate with detained youth, making the changes advocated by the jail treatment program seem, at least for a time, more attainable and palatable.
Still, after their release, youth come to reject lessons learned in jail. In our view this is not because they embrace subcultural perspectives, but because the mainstream avenues, which they were promised would allow them to succeed, are blocked (cf. Fader, 2013; Rios, 2011). In other words, IRP graduates' critical perspective is associated with the difficulties that youth inevitably face during reentry, which involves a double transition from jail to the community and from adolescence to adulthood (Fader, 2013). Importantly, a ‘negative’ view has been found to be more prevalent among older African American males compared to their younger counterparts (Payne, 2008). The critical perspective that we observed in our respondents, therefore, may be fomented over time due to the bad treatment and stigma that youth suffer in other institutions, such as community centers (Rios, 2006).
Insofar as we identify a shift to subversive accounts within the first year of respondents' prison release, we think our findings have important implications for reform-oriented criminal justice programs. The long-term hold of lessons learned in jail could possibly be extended if adequate aftercare programming helped address social inequalities and deficiencies in the labor market that impede the future success of formerly incarcerated youth. Past research suggests that positive adolescent–staff interactions improve both the receptivity of adolescents while in detention as well as their actual post-release outcomes (Mulvey et al., 2010). Our research also suggests that criminal justice employees, who embrace intersectional views, may offer symbolic material that helps explain why youth embrace change in jail and these individuals may serve as role models for how socially disadvantaged youth might ultimately succeed.
Whether or not these problems are addressed, future research could productively extend our investigation to examine what happens to the identities of formerly incarcerated juveniles over a longer period. Can youth continue to shift identities as the contexts of their lives change? Or, after a return to social exclusion, will youth return to ‘hardened’ versions of selves (Young, 2007), which are incompatible with enacting the changes taught in prison treatment programs?
Footnotes
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of Punishment and Society. Their support and valuable comments on earlier versions of this article were much appreciated and led to many improvements in the manuscript. We would also like to thank Nancy Jacobs, Rebecca Balletto, and Kathy Tomberg for helping to make this research possible. We extend our gratitude to the prisoners and jail staff at the JDYC.