Juvenile Facility Staff Contestations of Change
| Author | Alexandra Cox |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225418794104 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225418794104
Youth Justice
2018, Vol. 18(3) 248 –264
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225418794104
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Juvenile Facility Staff Contestations
of Change
Alexandra Cox
Abstract
This article explores juvenile facility frontline staff members’ contestations of change of custodial practices
aimed at reducing restraints, introducing trauma-informed practices, and downsizing juvenile facilities.
Drawing from qualitative research about frontline staff members in a US state undergoing reform, the article
points to the ways that the reforms challenge staff members’ investments in behavioral control practices
as a vehicle for achieving order and control in their everyday lives as workers. It also points to shifts in
the broader political economy on punishment at the local, facility level, and the subsequent impact on staff
member perceptions of order, control and criminality.
Keywords
behavioral control, decarceration, frontline staff, reform, resistance
In recent years, states across America have engaged in a significant project of decarcera-
tion and devolution of their systems and systematic reforms of the residential facilities
that remain, spurred in part by the fiscal pressures on state governments that emerged in
the wake of the 2008 recession, but also under pressure from advocacy groups and foun-
dations who have promoted closure and reform (Abrams, 2013; Horowitz and Carlock,
2017; McCarthy et al., 2016). These reforms in youth custody have been partially inspired
by a model of youth custody developed in Missouri, which has smaller facilities, more
‘humane’ environments and trauma-oriented care (Mendel, 2010; Moore, 2009). But the
reforms have also been happening in a number of Western European contexts (Dunkel,
2015; Horowitz and Carlock, 2017; Kelly and Armitage, 2014; Schiraldi, 2018).
On their face, the reforms to youth custody systems in the United States seemingly
represent a ‘swing’ away from a punitive and toward a more rehabilitative and thera-
peutic approach to young people (Bernard and Kurlychek, 2010). Youth justice reform-
ers have argued that this ‘swing’ is a necessary one away from a period in the 1990s
Corresponding author:
Alexandra Cox, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK.
Email: alexandra.cox@essex.ac.uk
794104YJJ0010.1177/1473225418794104Youth JusticeCox
research-article2018
Original Article
Cox 249
where large classes of young people – particularly young people of color – were over-
criminalized and punished (Larson and Carvente, 2017). However, the pendulum the-
ory of criminal justice reform, which suggests that there are ‘swings’ or cycles in
systems from punitive to rehabilitative, may not be an accurate representation of what
is actually a complex, contested and contradictory process. Goodman et al. (2017)
argue for an ‘agonistic’, as opposed to linear, model of change which recognizes that
penal developments are a ‘product of struggle between actors with different types and
amounts of power’ (p. 8). They point to the varied actors, or ‘agonists’, who operate in
the penal landscape and often contest change. Drawing from qualitative interviews that
took place with staff members in residential juvenile facilities in the United States dur-
ing a period of reform, I argue that juvenile facility staff contestations of reform shed
light on the difficult and fraught process of trying to meet children’s needs in a custo-
dial context that is overwhelmingly focused on their deeds. I also point to transforma-
tions in the broader political economy outside of the facilities, and their impact on staff
contestations of change. I argue that this was a context where increased job insecurity,
particularly among public sector workers, set anxieties about the stability of their work
into motion. These anxieties arguably solidified staff members’ investments in what
they perceived to be the more enduring aspects of their work, those rooted in the idea
that custodial interventions are an effective form of punishment. It also demonstrated
their resistance to the idea that custodial interventions can meet the emotional needs of
young people.
Residential Reforms
New York State embarked on a large-scale process of juvenile justice reforms around
2007 (Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice, 2009). The reforms to the state’s resi-
dential juvenile facilities began when Eliot Spitzer became the Democratic governor of
the state in 2007 and appointed a new commissioner of the state’s Office of Children and
Family Services (OCFS), Gladys Carrión. OCFS is responsible for the state’s juvenile
facilities as well as its child welfare services. Carrión set out to reform and close the
state’s juvenile facilities. The state ultimately closed down 31 facilities and reduced its
admissions numbers from 1,692 young people in 2007 to just 338 young people in 2016
(National Juvenile Justice Network and Texas Public Policy Foundation, 2013; Office of
Children and Family Services, 2016). The state also engaged in a process of realignment,
closing their state-level juvenile facilities and shifting young people to locally controlled,
often privately contracted facilities, also consistent with national trends (Butts and Evans,
2011; Cate, 2016).
States across the United States have cited several reasons for downsizing their juvenile
facilities, from fiscal concerns, to poor conditions of confinement. State officials pointed
to research on the deleterious effects of confinement on young people, particularly in
squelching their development, embedding the labeling effects of system contact, separat-
ing them from their families, and exposing them to poor conditions of confinement (see,
for example, Gatti et al., 2009; Nagin et al., 2009).
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