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AbstractIncarcerated juveniles are a largely invisible population in the United States. Research into training schools and other juvenile correctional facilities has uncovered a sordid history of good intentions and bad practices. Juvenile correctional facilities are generally considered a less harmful environment for serious delinquents than adult prisons but a much more severe sanction than alternative community programs or treatment would be. Studies have shown that juveniles in confinement face similar deprivation and many of the same pains of imprisonment (Sykes 1958) as adult prisoners, but the more pressing threat to adolescent inmates may be to their psychological selves rather than their physical being. New research on adolescent brain development is garnering attention and sparking questions about the culpability and punishment of juvenile offenders, even as public opinion research suggests that there is fairly widespread support for rehabilitation and a social‐welfare oriented juvenile justice system. By listening and giving voice to incarcerated youth and their "keepers," investigating the conditions of confinement, and continuing to evaluate programs and outcomes, researchers are positioned to play a key role in the future of juvenile justice and juvenile correctional facilities.

The focus of this article is on attempts within a juvenile correctional facility to `normalize' adolescent inmates and to deflate or redirect their goals and aspirations. Many young offenders have been socialized to fully embrace the `American Dream'. For the teenage boys in this study, the American Dream was about the attainment of wealth and masculine prestige. Lacking legitimate opportunities to attain wealth through conforming means, most turned to criminal enterprises, leading to their incarceration. In this article, I argue that juvenile correctional facilities are one of the last bastions of the `old penology' and one latent task of such institutions is to level the aspirations of young inmates so that they will face fewer anomic conditions when released back into the community. Drawing on ethnographic research of a cottage for violent offenders at one state's maximum-security juvenile training school, I demonstrate how cottage staff members play a central role in modeling conforming behaviors, strategies and attitudes for their institutional `sons', encouraging the boys to `aim low' and adopt aspirations and goals more in line with the opportunities available to them in the community.

Cottage staff members in a juvenile training school play a crucial role in the state's attempts to rehabilitate or resocialize adolescent offenders. As the predominant adult influences in the lives of juvenile inmates during their incarceration, cottage staff members set the tone and help to define the institutional experience for the youth assigned to the living unit. In this ethnographic study of one cottage of violent offenders, the author examines and discusses the crucial role of cottage staff members who, in many ways, embody the spirit of parens patriae and serve as their adolescent inmates' guardians, keepers, counselors, and role models.

"Deviance and Social Control: A Sociological Perspective, Third Edition provides a sociological examination of deviance and social control in society. Authors Michelle Inderbitzin, Kristin A. Bates, and Randy Gainey use sociological theories to illuminate a variety of issues related to deviant behavior and societal reactions to deviance, including introductions to classic and current sociological theories as well as research on definitions and causes of deviance and reactions to deviant behavior. The unique text/reader format provides the best of both worlds, offering both substantial original chapters that clearly explain and outline the sociological perspectives on deviance, paired with carefully selected articles on deviance and social control taken directly from leading academic journals and books"--

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword / Inderbitzin, Michelle -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Road to Juvie -- 3. Locked Up and Back Again -- 4. And Now I'm an Adult -- 5. Dangers and Decisions: Navigating Desistance as a Young Man -- 6. You Can Run but You Can't Hide -- 7. Finding a Net to Fall Back On: The Young Woman's Journeys -- 8. Everyday Desistance: Theory Meets Reality -- 9. Policy and Practice Reforms: Supporting the Pathway to Adulthood -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix: The Research Process -- Bibliography -- Index

This volume examines how volunteers and non-profit programs encourage institutional change in prisons and offer individual support and services to people who are housed behind bars. Through a diverse set of chapters, including two that are co-written by current prisoners, the volume spans the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and juvenile and adult facilities. The book showcases the exciting, groundbreaking, and yet often unrecognized work that the voluntary sector provides in correctional settings. Collectively, the chapters highlight beneficial practices while raising critical questions about the role of the voluntary sector in prison and reentry settings. The chapters also offer useful information about how to implement innovative prison programs that promote health, education, and peer support.