Locked Up, Locked Out

Anne M. Nurse

Description

Locked Up, Locked Out follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and reentry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside.

Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some "area codes" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, "I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back." Another reports, "There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."

Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date.

The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families.

Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.

Sujets

• Gender Studies
• Public Policy
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology
• Criminology

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 16 juillet 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826517135
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Locked Up, Locked Out Young Men in the Juvenile Justice System

Anne M. Nurse

Locked Up, Locked Out

Locked Up, Locked Out Young Men in the Juvenile Justice System

Anne M. Nurse

Vanderbilt University Press Nashville

© 2010 by Vanderbilt University Press Nashville, Tennessee 37235 All rights reserved First edition 2010

His book is printed on acid-free paper. Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nurse, Anne, 1968– Locked up, locked out : young men in the juvenile justice system / Anne M. Nurse. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8265-1711-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8265-1712-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Juvenile justice, Administration of—United States. 2. Juvenile detention homes—United States. 3. Juvenile delinquents—United States. 4. Young men—United States. I. Title. V9104.N873 2010 364.360973—dc22 2009045466

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Contents

An Introduction to the Juvenile Justice System 1

Incarcerated Youth and Heir Worlds 29

Institutional Order 53

Youth Culture on the Inside 86

Contact with the Outside 109

Coming ome 128

Policy Directions 157

Sources Cited 181

Acknowledgments 197

Index 199

Locked Up, Locked Out

Chapter 1

An Introduction to the Juvenile Justice System

In the summer of , Charles, a seventeen-year-old male, was arrested for assault in Cleveland, Ohio. e, like many juveniles arrested in the state, was taken to his county detention home to be held until a hear- ing before the juvenile court. Because of the seriousness of the oense and a previous arrest record, the judge decided to commit him to the Department of Youth Services (DYS), the state-level juvenile correctional system. e ar- rived at the DYS intake center in the fall to begin serving his twelve-month sentence.  We know the facts of this Cleveland case because they are a matter of public record; the details of the youth’s arrest and sentence appeared in his local paper. He same information was also available in the arrest and incar- ceration statistics collected by local and state oîcials for the year. Beyond this minimal information, however, the public was told little about the young man, the circumstances that brought him to juvenile court, or what hap- pened to him after he was released. We did not learn about the family he left behind when he entered the DYS system, nor did we hear about his experi- ences in juvenile detention. is post-release attempts to ïnd a job and stay out of trouble were also invisible.  Each morning more than ninety-four thousand youth wake up in deten- tion centers (Livsey, Sickmund, and Sladky, 2009). His translates to hun- dreds of thousands of young people passing through the gates of these fa- cilities each year. Some of them are housed in institutions that oer real assistance. Many, however, awaken in dangerous and underfunded facilities that do little more than warehouse them for the length of their sentence. Recent investigations have revealed the existence of endemic violence, abuse, and other serious problems in many of these facilities (Cohen, 2008; Kris- berg, 2003; U.S. Department of Justice, 2008). He public’s lack of knowledge

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