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Inside a maximum-security juvenile training school

Institutional attempts to redefine the American Dream and `normalize' incarcerated youth

Oregon State University, USA

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.

Key Words: American Dream • aspirations • juvenile institution • resocialization • staff roles

Punishment & Society, Vol. 9, No. 3, 235-251 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1462474507077492


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