ARE THE[SE] KIDS ALRIGHT?:
STATES OF INCARCERATION AND SUBORDINATION
IN THE LEARNING AND LIVED EXPERIENCES OF YOUTH
IN A JUVENILE DETENTION FACILITY

by

Jonathan Patrick Arendt

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto

© Copyright by Jonathan Patrick Arendt 2012

ARE THE[SE] KIDS ALRIGHT?:
STATES OF INCARCERATION AND SUBORDINATION
IN THE LEARNING AND LIVED EXPERIENCES OF YOUTH
IN A JUVENILE DETENTION FACILITY

Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Jonathan Patrick Arendt
Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning
University of Toronto

ABSTRACT

This study examines the dynamics and implications of trans-spatial subordination in/across the lived experiences of six incarcerated participant youths in a secure custody facility for juveniles in Louisiana. Five male teenagers (four African American, one White) and one female teenager (African American) discuss the limitations, harassment, and confinement in various aspects of their lives and speak about the impact on their expectations for the future.
The author employs several methodologies in order to develop a multimedia, multifaceted representation of their lives. The narratives elicited through interviews provide the bulk of the data as the participants describe this perpetual subordination. The photographs, resulting from the implementation of a visual ethnographic methodology, provide images that serve as catalysts for introspection and analysis of significance in the mundane and routine, particularly as they apply to the carceral facilities, structures, and policies themselves. Film viewing and discussion offer an array of depictions of youth and criminality to which the youths responded, granting a simultaneous peek at how these marginalized youths viewed themselves and how mainstream media productions depict them.

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After a particularly provoking viewing session of an animated film, the author expands the preliminary boundaries of the work beyond cells and the walls of the prison. The expanding focus examines subordinating elements in their lives with their families and in their neighbourhoods. The challenges, harassment, and obstacles experienced in their communities continued in their schools and during their encounters with law enforcement, the latter of which often led directly to imprisonment. Finally, the youths reflected on the confining subordination that existed in the facilities, the product of the combination of: their discomfort with the surveillant structure, their perceived arbitrariness of privilege, and the lack of any relevant education. They also identified opportunities for voicing their opinions and recognized the relative safety of this facility compared to others.
As the participants conceptualized their futures and articulated their relatively narrow and often ambiguous hopes, the sobering influence of such perpetual subordination is evident. The author closes with a discussion of the study’s importance to future research with marginalized youth in a society of increasing surveillance and security as well as implications for teacher education.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first acknowledgments are for my participants: Katie, Jay, Rider, Fisher,
Nemo, and Bambam. These six youths invested much in the power of their own narratives and their consistent pleas to be heard underscored the importance they saw in their stories and became a sort of chorus to the dissertation. That they trusted me with their stories and their words, after assigning so much significance to them, is a humbling compliment and a responsibility I was proud to have. I can only hope that I’ve done their stories, feelings, and fears some justice, something they’d experienced little of in their lives, at least those parts which they shared with me.
I would also like to thank the administration and staff at the Kakau Parish
Juvenile Detention Center (KPJDC) for their willingness to open their doors to an outsider, allowing for a documented glimpse of a juvenile space that is not often available publicly. The site was generally accommodating from the initial proposal, partly the result of the facility’s attempts to distinguish itself as more progressive than the other, more traditional and maligned juvenile prisons in the state. I am perhaps most grateful that they allowed me to put cameras in the hands of these six youths so that they might chronicle, through their photographs, their lives in prison spaces. The resulting images add a dynamic to the research that would not have been possible otherwise.
My advisor, Dr. Karyn Cooper, has been an invaluable resource and staunch ally in all phases of my work. She has given of her time and self, even though she had much more significant responsibilities of her own to deal with. Unfailingly, she listened as I pitched one idea after another, balancing critique and caution with approbation and

iv encouragement. There were also those times when she became close friend and confidant when I struggled—conceptually and practically. I cannot express my thanks enough for all that she has done for and meant to me. I hope that she reads this manuscript with pride, and feels that she’s presided over success.
Thanks also to Dr. Henry Giroux who has been a mentor and sounding board for my thoughts, questions, and ideas. After meeting Henry in December of 2008, on the verge of my research, he has humored me with his time and his own thoughts as I struggled with articulating difficulties as my work grew increasingly sociological and cultural. There was no other academic whose work was more influential and inspiring to me than Henry and having the ability to tell him that in person as well as have him answer my questions is one of those precious, serendipitous opportunities that remain with people their entire lives.
The rest of my committee was likewise supportive. Dr. Peter Trifonas has proved to be a supporter from my early days at OISE/UT. Finding myself in Toronto after having left Louisiana on the morning Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, I struggled with the coverage of the storm, the well-being of my family, and my own place with respect to it all. Peter’s course was a haven for me, my disgust and my doubts concerning media coverage that also gave me a deconstructive framework for working through those tensions. He was, and remains, a supportive colleague whom I admire and respect and to whom I am grateful for his continued advocacy for the work that I produce.
Thanks, as well, to Dr. Diane Conrad whose advice and career I respect tremendously. As the foremost authority in education working with incarcerated teens in Canada, I approached her early for any help, insight, or resources she might have to offer.

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She is a pioneer in this field and I’m awed by her consistent accommodation of help when asked.
My family back in Louisiana (father Michael, mother Maxine, sister Michelle, brother Chris, and sister Tracy) has been consistently supportive, enduring our separation knowing that I am pursuing something personally important and to which I have been firmly committed. It’s been easy for none of us, especially with my mother’s increasingly debilitating dementia taking its toll. The frantic and at times merciless march to the dissertation was assuaged by the comfort and confidence in the sacrifices of my father and sister, Michelle, at home with my mother, caring for her and enabling me to focus my efforts on this work. The completion of this dissertation owes a tremendous debt to them both, one I am not sure I’ll ever be able to repay. My thanks are, I grant, poor. And my mother shaped me, morally, ethically, and educationally. I regret that she won’t fully understand how her influence has culminated in my work in the coming pages, but she knew what I intended when I started and I’ll satisfy myself with the pride I am certain she would have right now.
Finally, thanks to my wife, Martha. Our relationship has withstood cross-country moves, immigration departments in the United States and Canada, and now—a dissertation. Of these, I am not sure which has been most strenuous. But the last few years, working full time as I attended school full time, she supported me, in every way that word can be understood. The tempestuous completion of this dissertation has not always, or perhaps often, been easy. But her strength, commitment, and grace never failed and are absolutely things I could not have done without. Our relationship has only become stronger and the sacrifices she has made for this pursuit I will likely never fully

vi understand or appreciate. Once again, I find that my thanks are poor. And in the last two years, our family has grown by one. Our daughter, Cecily, has been a constant source of inspiration and joy. I am a better husband and father because of her. And I believe this dissertation is a better work because of the influence of all of the people that have been a part of my life during its conception and execution.
Much obliged.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ABSTRACT
• ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES DEDICATION iv viii xii xiii
CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION
Narrative Beginnings
11368
Organizational Overview Topic Importance and Contemporary Relevance Listen . . .

CHAPTER 2 – ABSTRACT CONTEXTS
Comment on the State of Juvenile Incarceration Media Representations and Attitudinal Impact Media, Truth, and Reality
10 10 18 23 26 28 31 34
Media and the Redemptive Fantasy Cultural Studies Theoretical Context and Framework Research Issues and Questions

• CHAPTER 3 – CONCRETE CONTEXTS
• 35

36 36 38 40 44 47 50 54
Kakau Parish Juvenile Detention Center
Lobby Control room Recreation rooms The yard and gym The classrooms Cells
Facility Administration and Relative Progressivity

CHAPTER 4 – A POWERPUFFED PROVOCATION
The Lab
59 59 60 62 69
These “Lab Kids” The Powerpuff Experience Challenges to Personal Preconceptions

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• Implications for Self and Search
• 73

CHAPTER 5 – METHODOLOGY
Theoretical Support
75 75

• Narrative inquiry and interviewing
• 75

• Impact
• 76

Substantive contribution Reflexivity
77 78

• Visual Ethnography
• 80

Navigation and Negotiation
Gaining access
82 83

• Negotiations with administration
• 84

• Conducting the Research
• 87

• Field notes
• 88

• Establishing rapport
• 90

• Researcher’s Reflection on Role
• 95

• Participant Selection and Profiles
• 100

102 103 104 106 107 108 110 113 115 118 121
Bambam Jay Katie Rider Fisher Nemo
Consent Ethics Interviewing and Photographing Beyond Media Transcription and Organization

• CHAPTER 6 – AT HOME
• 127

128 138 152 155 157
Participant Neighbourhoods and Communities Participants’ Families, Crime, and Imprisonment Family Influence on Attitudes Mental Health and Support Concluding Thoughts

• CHAPTER 7 – IN SCHOOL
• 159

160 163 166 173
School Campus Violence Campus Security Presence and Disciplinary Penalties School Based Offenses Leading to Arrest Enrollment Status, Educational Futures, and Ambiguity The Achievement Ideology and Perceived Importance of School 176

• Concluding Thoughts
• 183

CHAPTER 8 – AGAINST COPS
Law Enforcement Encounters
185 187

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Tasing Attitudes Toward Cops Charges Levied Court Proceedings and Rehabilitative Support Concluding Thoughts
199 202 207 211 216

• CHAPTER 9 – IN PRISON
• 218

220 226 230 244 244 247 253 259 264 267 276 282 288 291
Detention Center Classroom Achievement Ideology Behind Bars Relative Progressivity KPJDC Staff
Verbal harassment Physical encounters Privilege The yard Caring, concerned, and invested
Resistance Surveillance Cells The Bar Room “This place just makes you worse”

CHAPTER 10 – TOWARD FUTURES
Aspirations
299 300 308 309 312 315 317 319
Expectations
Graduate Equivalency Diplomas Armed Forces career considerations Other anticipated realities
The Good Life Concluding Thoughts

CHAPTER 11 – CONCLUSION
Revisiting the Research Issues and Questions Autobiographical
321 321 321 322 324 325 327 331 333
Whiteness Outsider status
Topical Urgency and Social Relevance Current Limitations and Future Trajectories Teacher and Preservice Education A Conclusion for a Conclusion

• REFERENCE LIST
• 336

356
APPENDIX A
University of Toronto Ethics Approval

x
APPENDIX B APPENDIX C

• Consent Forms
• 357

358 359
Parent/Guardian Consent Participant Consent

360

• 361
• Proposed Interview Schedule

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LIST OF FIGURES

Rec 2 lounge area, with couch and Wii console cabinet. Art crafts shelves in Rec 1. Cafeteria of Rec 2. Puzzles along the top of the wall in Rec 2. Fencing surrounding the yard. New Leash on Life dogs in their pens. Facility gymnasium. Teacher’s desk and computer table in junior high classroom. Posters of Martin Luther King Jr. and an inspirational saying in high school classroom.
Figure 1: Figure 2: Figure 3: Figure 4: Figure 5: Figure 6: Figure 7: Figure 8: Figure 9:

Figure 10: Figure 11: Figure 12: Figure 13: Figure 14: Figure 15:
North side of the west cell wing. The bars of the bar room. Katie’s KPJDC Uniform. Handcuffs and ankle restraints. Escape warning sign leading to the yard. Photograph of a Black History timeline displayed in high school classroom.
Figure 16: Figure 17: Figure 18: Figure 19: Figure 20: Figure 21: Figure 22: Figure 23: Figure 24: Figure 25: Figure 26: Figure 27: Figure 28: Figure 29: Figure 30: Figure 31:
Crystal, rescued dog part of the New Leash on Life program. Grievance box outside the control room. Cabinet in Rec 2 that houses the Wii video game system. Rider’s bed in the east wing’s O.R.. Southwest corner and western fence of the yard. North fence and northeast corner of the yard. East fence of the yard (1 of 2). East fence of the yard (2 of 2). Graffiti inside a cell door. “All juveniles must be supervised” sign in gymnasium. Surveillance camera mounted on gymnasium wall. The windows of the control room. Cell toilet and sink. Cafeteria and serving area in Rec 2. Hallway leading to cells, west wing, south side. The bar room.

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DEDICATION

For the women in my life.
For my mother, Maxine, who taught and nurtured me, For my wife, Martha, who supports and encourages me, For my daughter, Cecily, who inspires and exhilarates me.

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Just listen to what the kids say.   Because we the future, ya feel me?   We just need somebody to talk to and get our life stories out there.

• -
• Jay, research participant and repeat offender

Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise   theory becomes simply, “blah, blah, blah” and practice, pure activism.

• -
• Paulo Friere (2001, p. 30)

Chapter 1: Introduction
Narrative Beginning(s)

The first time I visited the Kakau Parish Detention Center¹, it was as a guest of my mother, the junior high classroom teacher for the facility. We stood before a set of double doors, staring at our reflections in the single-way glass panels, as we waited for the permissive, tandem sounds of the security buzzer and door-lock granting us entrance. After being buzzed in, I was greeted by the sight of a high school-aged inmate, probably not much younger than I was at the time, cleaning up one of the recreation rooms, his back to me and a wall of reinforced security glass separating the two of us.
Now, time also separates me—more than a decade—from that first visit and my current work and research for this dissertation at the same detention facility.
In that time, I earned my Masters in Education from Louisiana State University and taught in both Louisiana and Texas, in junior high and high school classrooms. In those years, when I reflected on my own practice and pedagogy, I often thought about the stories and lessons my mother shared with me from her years working in a primary inner city school and then in this detention center. She’d tell us stories about these kids and their lives as we were growing up. She would weave their lives and hardships into her lectures any time we complained about food we didn’t care for, clothes that didn’t sport a brand name label, or a house that was smaller than those of our friends at school. As often as I’d hear about these students of hers, one might think I would’ve gained a bit of understanding about them and their lives. I’d always imagined that I did, too. What I

¹ A pseudonym for this juvenile detention facility, site of my research

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2realized, though, years later as I worked in the Center with these kids, as the research went on, was how little I understood and how much I’d assumed.
So, there I stood before the same reflective double doors years later. I was alone; my mother was forced to leave the classroom once her Alzheimer’s and accompanying dementia progressed to the stage where she was an educational liability in the eyes of the school district’s supervisors. Nevertheless, I felt as though I was there as her guest once more. It was her work at the Center and relationship with the administration and staff that helped me gain access to the facilities, something neither often nor easily done in the state of Louisiana. In some cases, it also helped my relationships with the incarcerated youths who were recidivists and remembered her in the preceding years, as they came and went, in and out of the facility.
Further, just as I still felt I was permitted on the site as guest of my mother, I likewise felt the pane of security glass, a metaphor for the distance I perceived between myself and the incarcerated youths and the Center’s staff and security. It was that feeling, that impression which had the most initial, visceral impact on me and shaped my intentions with this dissertation. I am neither social worker nor clinician; I have no diagnostic experience or authority. Throughout, I wrestled with my role as researcher, an issue I visit more explicitly in my methodology chapter and conclusion. During those, and other, struggles I realized that my work should be one that attempts an understanding. In order to affect that attempt at better understanding, I looked to David Smith’s (1999, 2010) work on hermeneutics as a theoretical foundation. In Pedagon, Smith cites the Hughes Brothers film, Menace II Society, as a vehicle for interpretation and understanding, contrasting his life in “a small, fairly isolated country town in southern
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Alberta, Canada” with the “far away ghetto of Compton, Los Angeles” and can watch this unsettling film “in the comfort of my living room” concluding that what he teaches is not “somehow value-free or not connected to the structures and politics of power in my own society.” Further, we must be mindful to what extent such films can distort. Asante Jr. reminds us that such hood films “are supposed to capture and define what it means to be Black. Take, for example, the fictional film Menace II Society whose official tagline was ‘This is truth. This is what’s real,’ ” (2008, p. 25) but often reinforce stereotypes through their production. Media deconstruction can help ameliorate those stereotypes, through using cultural studies and interrogating the messages of power and hierarchy as a means to deconstruct.
I’ve also looked at the power that media possesses in forming attitudes and creating ideas and assumptions about others, using research on film, media, and cultural studies to further that theoretical framework. Methodologically, there were several approaches I employed to combat the “crisis of representation” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). In Chapter 5, I describe my methodology and examine how this struggle for understanding incorporates film viewing sessions with the juveniles and discussion of the films (e.g. Buckingham, 1993; Smith, 1999), the photographs of their incarcerated spaces taken by the participants (e.g. Pink, 2007), and narrative elicitation through formal interviews and informal observations and conversations. The ensuing Chapters (6 through 10) develop from the photographs, film, and interviews and offer a glimpse of the subordination and limited agency of my 6 participants.

Organizational Overview

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Initially my dissertation was going to focus on media engagement and responses to juvenile criminalization with my participants in the physical context of the facility’s high school classroom. After hearing especially surprising and thought-provoking responses to viewing a cartoon, Powerpuff Girls (Castricone, 2002), by some of the juveniles, I realized that I would have to broaden the scope, context, and horizon of my work to more fully account for the subordinating aspect of these youths’ lives. As Giroux points out, “More and more working-class and middle-class youth and poor youth of colour either find themselves in a world . . . that dehumanizes and criminalizes their behavior in multiple sites, extending from the home and school to the criminal justice system” (2009, p.72); thus, my work needed to account for these “multiple sites.” During a discussion with Giroux, he expressed his belief for the importance of studying these marginalized youth, particularly the incarcerated, because there is an “absence of social responsibility” constituting a “crisis” (personal communication, March 10, 2011). Luttrell echoes this when she explains her purpose in Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds, “I am also writing against what I view as a vanishing sense of social responsibility and commitment to children’s entitlement to nurturance, including education” (2003, p. 176).
Reflecting on the jarring Powerpuff Girls session, I can think of no more fitting verb than “provoke” to describe the manner in which this animated film, despite its superficial innocuousness, provoked the participants’ comments. In turn, I was provoked. And the hope is that this dissertation, likewise, provokes. For as Smith (2010) says, invoking Gadamer, “Truth never reveals itself on its own terms, it has to be provoked” and this work is my attempt at a “careful orchestration” of that provocation. Bauman refers to this as “critical pedagogy . . . sharpening its critical edge” in order to
5make “society feel guilty” and to start “stirring things up” (Bauman, 2005, p. 14) through “stirring human consciousness” (Giroux, 2009, p. 66). This discovery and transition in my work is more fully discussed in Chapter 4.
The remaining chapters up to the Conclusion examine the trans-spatial subordination in the participants’ lived experience in which they identified subordinating elements that they felt limited their agency, autonomy, freedom, and opportunity. In highlighting their narratives, however, I also had to resist the temptation and allure of focusing on the more sensationalistic passages and look “beyond the sensationalized aspects and pathologized discourse of incarcerated juvenile lives and [investigate] the way a host of societal factors contribute to their subordination” (Dimitriadis, 2008) and I adjusted my approach to more explicitly examine this “host of societal factors.” That approach begins in Chapter 6, as the participants discuss their families, communities, and neighbourhoods and the degree to which the difficulties here impacted their lives and contributed to their apparent delinquency. Each of the youths attended a public school in his/her neighbourhood; these schools were not exempt from the subordination the participants experienced in their communities and I discuss these in Chapter 7. Some of my participants had significant and harassing experiences on their school campuses with law enforcement, an increasing presence on school campuses (Giroux, 2009). These encounters serve as a transition from the subjugation experienced at school to that which was experienced with police officers, the focus of Chapter 8. Chapter 9 takes a closer look at the detention facility itself, a capitulation, in many ways, of the subordination these youths experienced at home, in school, and with cops. The facility serves as a microcontext of harassment, privilege, and opportunity for the larger macrocontext
6examined in the preceding chapters. In Chapter 9, the discussion ranges from the facilities at large and the individual cells for the youths, the most symbolic and concrete (literally and figuratively) representation of their paths through the juvenile justice system. The subordination that these youths experienced and were subjected to was perpetual; it transcended the space of the detention facility or their individual cells. I would call this oppressive and recursive phenomena trans-spatial subordination. Rios, meanwhile, identified a similar transcendence with the youths in his study, calling it “multispatial criminalization” and describing it as such:
They experienced the effects of criminalization in other significant spaces: the street, school, business, and even their homes. They compared encounters with the police, probation officers, and prosecutors with interactions they had with school administrators and teachers who placed them in detention rooms . . . For the youth, their experience in each of these institutional settings had one thing in common: being treated as a criminal. (2007, p. 21)