Race, Recognition and Retribution in Contemporary Youth Justice: The Intractability Malleability Thesis

Description

Race, Recognition and Retribution in Contemporary Youth Justice provides a cross-national, sociohistorical investigation of the legacy of racial discrimination, which informs contemporary youth justice practice in Canada and England. The book links racial disparities in youth justice, especially exclusion from ideologies of care and notions of future citizenship, with historical practices of exclusion. Despite the logic of care found in both rehabilitative and retributive forms of youth justice, Black inner-city youth remain excluded from lenience and social welfare considerations. This exclusion reflects a historical legacy of racial discrimination apparent in the harsher sanctions levied against Black, innercity youth. In exploring race’s role in this arrangement, the book asks: To what extent were Black youth excluded from historic considerations of the lenience and social care, built into the logic of youth justice in England and Canada? To what extent are the disproportionately high incarceration rates, for Black, inner-city youth in the contemporary system, a reflection of a historic exclusion from considerations of lenience and social care? How might contemporary justice efforts be reoriented to explicitly prioritize considerations of lenience and social care ahead of penalty for Black, inner-city youth? Examining the entrenched structural continuities of racial discrimination, the book draws on archival and interview data, with interviewees including professionals who work with inner-city youth. In concert with the archival and interview data, the book offers the intractability/malleability I/M thesis, an integrated social theoretical logic with the capacity to expand the customary analytical scope for understanding the contemporary entrenched normalization of racialized youth as punishable. The aim is to advance a historicized account, exploring youth’s positioning as constitutive of a continuity of racialized peoples’, in general, and youth’s, in particular, historic exclusion from the benefits of modern rights, including lenience and care. The I/M logic takes its analytical currency from a combined critical race theory (CRT) and recognition theory. The book argues that a truly progressive era of youth justice necessitates cultivating policy and practice which explicitly prioritizes considerations of lenience and social care, ahead of reliance on penalty. This multidisciplinary book is valuable reading for academics and students researching criminology, sociology, politics, anthropology, critical race studies, and history. It will also appeal to practitioners in the field of youth justice, policymakers, and third-sector organizations. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Preface List of abbreviations Introduction: race, recognition, and retribution in contemporary youth justice, in England and Canada Introduction Requiring a more expanded explanatory scope A specific focus on Black youth: a global story beyond crime and punishment The intractability/malleability (I/M) thesis: a critical race theory derivation Chapter structure 1 The intractability/malleability (I/M) thesis: On the historic construction of Black, racialized youth as intractably deviant outsiders Introduction Part I The I/M thesis: expanding the analytical scope Writing race into youth penal history: racialized youth and the conditions of modern justice Part II Critical race theory: interest convergence over proportionality Critical race theory and the conditions of modern justice A critical race theory account of institutional recognition Part III The I/M framework: between critical race theory and recognition theory Love the family and self-confidence Rights institutions of justice and self-respect Solidarity the wider society and self-esteem Conclusion 2 Youth justice (YJ) through a historical lens: on the invention of the intractably deviant Black, racialized youth Introduction Part I The wider socio-historical context of early twentieth-century youth penal reform Inventing the Black, racialized intractably deviant youth Black youth as intractably, deviant outsiders: a legacy of racialized peoples’ ontological distortion within penal history Youth penal reform and the invention of the intractably deviant Black, racialized youth Part II The invention of the intractably, deviant racialized youth in the context of youth penal reform Youth penal reform: rehabilitation and treatment through the well-established lens of class—the English and Canadian contexts Conclusion 3 What’s it all about Jose? the invention of Black, racialized youth as intractably deviant outsiders, in the English context Introduction Part I The construction of Black intractability in Inter-War Britain Philanthropy, benevolence, and the construction of Black, racialized youth as intractably deviant outsiders, in the historic English context What’s it all about Jose? Marginalization and the tacit ‘colour line’ in recreation and employment The Fletcher Report and the broader socio-historical milieu of youth like Jose The Fletcher Report and the anti-black racism Part II Intractability, transformation, and continuity: a system diagnostic Intractability as a legacy: enters generation Windrush The Doulton Report: Black youth as educational sub-normals Conclusion 4 Educating Glovanna: legislating intractability and the seeds of Black, racialized youth outsider status, in the historic Canadian education framework Introduction Part I Education, citizenship, and segregation: exploring the seeds of Black youth’s intractably deviant status in Early Modern Canada Ruby bridges, education segregation and the wider global context of racial exclusion Educating Glovanna: legislating the seeds of Black youth’s intractably outsider status, in the historic Canadian education framework The Common School Act (1841): education, separation, and segregation The education system: a structure of opportunity Part II Deviance legislation, the I/M logic, and race as a moral problem Race as a moral problem: between self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem Conclusion 5 Taking stock of contemporary youth justice: ‘the alchemy of race and rights’ in the epoch of punishment Introduction Part I Taking stock of the present: back to the future From troublesome, to pesky, to criminal: race, youth, and intractability in the epoch of punishment and rights The I/M thesis on disproportionality: racialized youth in the epoch of punishment and rights Part II Intractability and disproportionality: beyond individual confidence and trust From individual confidence and trust to institutional illegitimacy Concluding analysis: the oxymoronic oddity of race and rights in youth justice—a take on institutional illegitimacy 6 Intractability, disproportionate incarceration, and the self-fulfilling risk policy framework: the case of the racialized youth gang Introduction Part I Youth gangs, public policy, and the self-fulfilling prophecy Current understandings of youth gangs in the UK context From postcodes to profit: a new operating model The changed meaning of territory and violence Understanding the gang as an evolving institution Government responses: focusing on youth as risky instead of youth’s need Part II The Canadian context: the role of policy in the self-fulfilling prophecy Self-fulfilling prophecy and structural indifference Problematically prioritizing risk ahead of need Self-fulfilling prophecies and the globalization of crime control Conclusion 7 The wider punitive effect of racialization: the informal (retributive) gaze in contemporary youth justice Introduction Part I Three vignettes on the wider punitive effect of racial stigma The wider punitive effect contextualized by antecedent logics Writing race into the criminalization of the family: between love, rights, and solidarity The wider punitive effect: informal, retributive, punitive Conclusion 8 Conclusion: the I/M logic and moving beyond crime and punishment Introduction Moving beyond crime and punishment: the logic of I/M The strengths of the I/M approach Reference list Appendices Appendix I: the origins of the I/M logic Appendix II: the sources of interview data Index