"We Can't Fix Their Idiot Lives:" Juvenile Treatment Programs in an Era of Neoliberal Social Abandonment

Author

Morganne Loach Sample, Bard CollegeFollow

Date of Submission

Spring 2015

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Sociology

Project Advisor 1

Allison McKim

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Using two months of interviews and fieldwork at Youth Care Corp., a non-residential treatment program for court mandated youth, this project serves as a case study and critique of theorized structural shifts around and within the crime control apparatuses of the U.S., such as the expanding privatization of welfare, increases in risk management thinking, and the abandonment of the rehabilitative ideal. In this paper I argue that a combination of these forces, in particular the de-funding of welfare services and move away from deviant rehabilitation, has created a tension within Youth Care Corp. between its institutional focus on the responsibilizing empowerment of low-risk youth and the informal, unprofessional provision of welfarist direct aid by individual staff.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Sample, Morganne Loach, ""We Can't Fix Their Idiot Lives:" Juvenile Treatment Programs in an Era of Neoliberal Social Abandonment" (2015). Senior Projects Spring 2015. 165.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2015/165