Abstract
To explore the relationship between education and youth punishment in Hawaiʻi, a five-year qualitative study using feminist research methods was conducted between January 2012 and October 2017 in Oʻahu, Hawai’i. This study examined the experiences of youth at a high school group-counseling program, teens in a juvenile justice program, and adults who had experiences in the juvenile justice system in Hawaiʻi. This study explored the multiple processes and consequences of youth punishment, especially for teens who moved between various institutions of control. This research describes the experiences youth had with institutions of control, especially schools and the juvenile justice system, and how instability exposed them to various youth institutions that made it challenging to exit these institutions. Themes found in this study suggest that racialized hierarchies and socioeconomic stratification developed through colonialism continue to have a significant impact on contemporary ideologies and practices of how to control marginalized bodies through present-day systems of punishment.
Keywords
Scholars in sociology, criminology, and education have addressed the connection between schools and the juvenile justice system (Chesney-Lind and Jones 2010; Flores 2016; Hall 2010; Hirschfield 2008; Kupchik 2010; Morris 2016; Winn and Behizadeh 2011). Studies have primarily focused on the implementation of crime control technologies and strategies in school settings that increase surveillance and the criminalization of youth at school (Addington 2019; Hirschfield 2008; Skiba and Peterson 1999). Little scholarship has addressed the role of colonialism in the processes of youth punishment, and the impacts it has on Indigenous youth and youth of color who are navigating multiple institutions of control. A more multidimensional analysis of youth punishment is important to understand the complexities of systems of punishment and control and their effects on teenagers’ lives. The connection between schools and the justice system is only one aspect in the process of punishment, with schools acting as an integral part of the course for youth entering the juvenile justice system. Other conditions, such as colonialism, child welfare, patriarchy, capitalism, racialization, and family hardship, add to the dimensions of youth punishment and control, resulting in a more complicated process.
The institutions of control that youth encounter can be overwhelming, confusing, and difficult to navigate successfully. This research uses feminist research methods and data from a qualitative study of juvenile justice programs and a public high school on Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, to explore how teens navigate complicated systems of connected youth institutions of control. I found that youth in Hawaiʻi are faced with navigating a confusing maze-like system of connected youth institutions that maintain colonial mechanisms of social control that result in degradation, marginalization, criminalization, and further vulnerability to harm. I refer to this process as an institutional maze. This study captures the experiences of youth who have navigated institutional control that is confusing and disorienting. I describe the experiences youth have with multiple institutions and how instability exposes them to various youth institutions that increase their difficulty in exiting carceral control.
Colonial Criminology in Hawaiʻi
Youth institutions of control assist in maintaining structural inequalities through the discipline and punishment of youth and their “problematic” behaviors. The racialized hierarchies and socioeconomic stratification that were developed through colonization are embedded in the processes of youth institutional control and conceptions of who is viewed as deviant, criminal, and what behaviors are seen as troublesome. Colonial criminological theories offer a perspective to understand how different forms of oppression appear in the lives and experiences of teens. This includes the role of education, law, criminalization, and processes of racialization that influence ideologies of inclusion or exclusion (Tatum 2000). Scholars have noted the “shadows” (Irwin & Umemoto 2016) or “haunting” (Stoler 2006) of colonialism that mediates the lives and narratives of young people impacted by the oppressive legacies of colonial projects. These shadows are present in the experiences and narratives of youth in this study who experienced life challenges, family separation, and negative and racist stereotypes faced in the institutional maze. As such, any youth enmeshed in the institutional maze may experience similar challenges.
The formation and development of institutions such as education and juvenile justice were part of colonial oppressive projects to assimilate Indigenous youth to European American norms (Banks 2007). This is evident in historical records of industrial education and boarding schools targeting Native Hawaiian youth, such as historical documents of the Hawaiʻi Industrial School (which became Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility in 1962) that show that most of the youth housed at the facility in the years following its founding in 1865 were Native Hawaiian. In addition, scholars have noted the criminalization of Native Hawaiians in different historical accounts, such as public hangings of Native Hawaiian Royalty (see Keahiolalo-Karasuda 2010) and the lynching of Joseph Kahahawai in 1932, who was one of five suspects accused of raping Thalia Massey, a case that resulted in a hung jury and mistrial in December 1931 (see Stannard 2006). Contemporarily, studies have indicated the overrepresentation of Native Hawaiian 1 and Pacific Islander youth in the Hawaiʻi juvenile justice system (Chesney-Lind and Bilsky 2011; Umemoto et al. 2012). These studies found a disproportionate number of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander youth at every level of the system (Chesney-Lind and Bilsky 2011; Umemoto et al. 2012).
In 2011, there was a disproportionate number of Native Hawaiian youth in detention. While Native Hawaiians only make up 30 percent of the overall Hawaiʻi youth population, they comprised 56 percent of the youth who had been detained (Chesney-Lind and Bilsky 2011). When examining juvenile arrests, researchers also found that Native Hawaiian youth had a higher rate of arrest than other ethnic groups, comprising 42 percent of all arrests between 2000 and 2010 (Umemoto et al. 2012). Between 2015 and 2017, Native Hawaiian youth “were not overrepresented in arrests given their proportion to the population but were overrepresented in subsequent points of contact in the juvenile justice system with HYCF [Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility] showing the greatest disparity” (Godinet 2018:8). In addition, when looking at referrals to juvenile court between 2015 and 2017, Native Hawaiian youth were the largest referral group statewide (Godinet 2018). As Native Hawaiian youth are the ethnic group with the largest number of youths in contact with the juvenile justice system in Hawaiʻi, a better understanding is needed of what has led to the disproportionate contact they are having with the juvenile justice system and how this connects to experiences with school punishment.
Neoliberal Responsibilization and Criminalization of Youth
Criminality has become a crucial component of governance in all areas of life, including the family and schools (Simon 2007). The shift in crime control and punishment can be attributed to the shift to neoliberal politics that incorporate discourses of criminality in processes and policies of governance. Discourses of criminality conceal racism and racist practices of social control embedded in youth institutions, such as education and juvenile justice. Wacquant (2009) discusses the convergence of penality and welfare under neoliberalism, which demonstrates discriminatory control of primarily lower-income and racialized communities. He argues this results in contemporary punishment functioning as “brute neutralization, rote retribution and simple warehousing—by default if not by design” (Wacquant 2009:296). These discriminatory practices of governing through crime under neoliberalism result in marginalized communities living in a “punitive society,” but their middle- and upper-class counterparts do not (Wacquant 2009:297).
With these new forms of “neoliberal penality” (Cox 2014), there is now more of “a focus on responsibilizing offenders to participate in their own self-governance” (Cox 2014:3). The neoliberal ideology of responsibilization is especially daunting for youth, as it eliminates the role of structural violence and inequality in youth behaviors (Cox 2014; King 2022; Roberts and Mahtani 2010). For instance, individualization is evident in Lopez’s (2017) research, where the young women expressed concerns about their capability to remain out of the legal system following release from juvenile correctional facilities. She highlights that participants perceived their success in avoiding reoffending as their personal responsibility, or “up to them” (Lopez 2017:176). Lopez (2017) argues that in many ways they are correct in these assumptions and/or beliefs because of the lack of services, reentry support, treatment, and/or programming available to youth upon release.
More emphasis is placed on individual responsibility in interventions for youth, rather than addressing the overall structures that harbor interlocking forms of oppression (Cox 2014). In addition, the emphasis on individual responsibility individualizes issues that make navigating systems of control much more complex and challenging for youth. The focus on individual responsibilization conceals the larger structural forms of oppression, such as policing and punishment practices, which make disproportionate minority contact pronounced for youth (King 2022).
When student behavior is perceived as disrespectful, irate, or uncontrollable, summons and arrests seem to be justified by school administrators and police officers. The association of such non-criminal behaviors with the juvenile justice system criminalizes students and labels them, which impacts their social status and self-perceptions (Morris 2016). Such criminal labels have effects outside of the school setting and extend beyond the schooling years. Punitive schools are said to habituate students to interactions with law enforcement and surveillance (Kupchik 2010; Rios 2011; Simon 2007; Wacquant 2001), meaning that students are being labeled at school as criminals and then subsequently treated as such (i.e., harsh punishments). As noted by Rios (2011), “In an era of mass incarceration, labeling not only generates criminality, it also perpetuates criminalization” (p. 45). In the end, students become accustomed to being treated as criminals both in and outside of schools.
The criminalization of youth that occurs by the synchronization of different punishment processes, institutions, and socialization is what Victor Rios refers to as a “youth control complex” (Rios 2011:40). The culmination of different labels and messages youth receive from various adults and institutional figures can impact self-concepts and youths’ future outcomes (Rios 2011). Furthermore, the exposure to different institutions of control from an early age results in many teens being raised in institutions. In this way, they are institutionalized youth or state-raised kids (Lerner 1988). Growing up as a “state-raised kid” can shape a young person’s perception of and response to authority figures, as well as their perceptions of institutions and their ability to provide support (Flores et al. 2018; Rios 2017). Negative encounters youth have with institutional authority figures can influence their “worldviews and outcomes” (Rios 2017). These experiences can, in turn, determine whom teens feel they can trust and feel safe around, and view as forms of social support.
Scholars have examined the challenges and needs of school staff working with court-involved youth (Crosby et al. 2015). Research has noted the lack of trauma-informed training that school staff and teachers receive that could assist them in understanding, identifying, and responding to behaviors that provide support for youth experiencing and/or having experienced trauma, especially for court-involved youth (Crosby et al. 2015; Ko et al. 2008). Crosby et al. (2015) found that court-involved youth exhibited specific behaviors, such as shutting down and internal distractions were particularly challenging. After implementing a trauma-informed intervention in their study, Crosby et al. (2015) found that “school personnel reported understanding the importance of compromise with students and reported improved insight into previously stigmatizing student behaviors” (p. 353).
School Experiences of Court-Involved Youth
Research on the educational experiences of court-involved youth is limited. In the few studies available, scholars have noted the role of involvement in the juvenile justice system to hinder youth educational progress and attainment. The risk of dropping out is increased through institutional responses to youth arrests and other forms of juvenile justice system involvement, as it disrupts a young person’s educational progress (Bernburg and Krohn 2003; Sweeten 2006). For example, Sweeten (2006) found that court appearances hinder youth educational attainment and increase the likelihood of youth dropping out of school. Furthermore, in a study of incarcerated youth in Florida, researchers found that youth educational attainment while incarcerated increased the likelihood of them returning to school upon release and decreased recidivism (Bloomberg et al. 2011). However, the coordination of school reentry is important in preventing delays with education continuation and attainment after the disruption of their educational placements and progress resulting from court involvement and incarceration (Burrell 2003; Goldkind and Hirschfield 2009; Hirschfield 2014; Mayer 2005; Stephens and Arnette 2000).
The disruption of educational placement and progress from court appearances or youth incarceration has been found in qualitative studies to come from multiple barriers that court-involved youth experience. This includes one study that found “policies that denied student’s the opportunity to stay at their home school during or after the time they were in the system” (Burrell 2003:3) were a barrier that resulted in most of the participants not being able to attend “regular high schools” once they were system involved, either in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems (Burrell 2003). Disruptions with educational enrollment or “curricular continuity” (Hirschfield 2014) are a significant hindrance for court-involved youth who have resulted in the exclusion or delay of post-release youth from enrolling in and/or attending their local school (Burrell 2003; Hirschfield 2014; Mayer 2005).
Youth navigating the complexities of multiple forms of institutional control, from schools to the juvenile justice system, face several challenges and barriers. This study examines the connection between schools and the juvenile justice system in what I refer to as an institutional maze. Hawaiʻi’s recent history of colonization provided a site to closely examine the intersection of historical or collective trauma (Alexander et al. 2004), racialized hierarchies, socioeconomic stratification, and youth control and punishment. Conducting a study focusing on the connection between public schools and juvenile justice in Hawaiʻi brings histories of colonization into the context of examining contemporary systems of punishment that apply not only to recently colonized places such as Hawaiʻi, but also the impact of colonization and oppressive institutions on youth of various backgrounds.
Method
This study used in-depth interviews collected at a high school and a community service program for youth on probation. In January of 2012, I began facilitating and managing writing workshops at various juvenile detention facilities on Oʻahu and became familiar with a community service program for youth on probation at one of the writing workshop locations. At that same time, I was invited to join a University of Hawaiʻi research team 2 to study a group-counseling program at a high school on Oʻahu. I became an active member (Adler and Adler 1987) of both programs. I conducted interviews with 9 court-involved youth and 26 high school students, for a total of 35 participants in this study (Table 1).
Participants.
Setting
The counseling groups were held at Tradewinds High School 3 located in a rural area on the island of Oʻahu. More than half of the student population at Tradewinds 4 were Native Hawaiian; about 10 percent were Filipino and Samoan, and the remaining student population identified as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and White (Hawaiʻi State Department of Education 2017). In 2016 to 2017, roughly half of the students qualified for free or reduced-cost lunch (Hawaiʻi State Department of Education 2017). The suspension rate at Tradewinds High School for 2016 to 2017 was 8 percent compared to the 2011 to 2012 Hawaiʻi state suspension rates of 5 percent in Hawaiʻi (Terrell 2015) and 6.4 percent nationally (National Center for Education Statistics 2017).
At Tradewinds High School, two counseling groups met once a week: one for boys and one for girls. I participated in the girls’ group along with the University of Hawaiʻi research team and the Tradewinds High School counselors. School counselors invited students to attend the groups. The groups were constructed to be safe and nonjudgmental spaces where attendance was voluntary. These supportive groups used counseling and therapeutic processes to address school misconduct, school disengagement, and other challenges youth were having at school to prevent them from formal involvement in the juvenile justice system, as many of these behaviors or difficulties at school increased their risk of criminal legal involvement. Consistent with human subjects’ ethics requirements, students were frequently reminded that they did not have to answer a question if they did not want to and that they could decline participating in discussions and activities that made them uncomfortable.
The nine court-involved youth in the study participated in a community service program located in an urban area of Oʻahu. While the juvenile justice system’s jurisdiction included the entire state of Hawaiʻi, the community service program was only offered to youth residing on the island of Oʻahu. The program supported youth on probation by assisting them in completing their court-mandated community service hours and paying back their court-ordered restitution. More than half of court-involved youth in Hawaiʻi identified as Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander and were low-income (Godinet and Li 2011). The youth on probation in this study had status offenses or drug-related adjudications. This study did not have access to their official records and relied on self-reports from the youth about their adjudications. Self-reports indicated four youth with substance use adjudications or incidents, three status offenses, and two nondisclosed adjudications. Status offenses accounted for 52 percent of arrests for youth in the state of Hawaiʻi (Godinet and Li 2011). About half of the youth in the program lived at home with their family or guardian. The other participants resided at the non-secure detention facility that was located near the program offices.
During the school year, youth participated in community service activities after school and on the weekends. During the summer, youth participated weekdays and weekends from 8:30 am until 2:00 pm. Youth attendance at community service activities was inconsistent for various reasons, such as school schedules, youth not showing up, and court dates. Because of this inconsistency, I would call the program mentors in the morning on the days I was scheduled to conduct interviews to see if they had youth attending. On five occasions, I was told not to come as they did not have any youth, or they had an issue they were resolving with a youth, and the activity was canceled for that day.
Recruitment and Data Collection
To recruit participants from the counseling groups at Tradewinds High School, the University of Hawaiʻi research team described the study to students at the beginning of each school year. The announcement included information about the goals of the study, that participation in the study was completely voluntary, and that we would observe, write field notes, and conduct interviews with student participants. The University of Hawaiʻi research team informed and reiterated to students that they could still attend the counseling groups if they did not want to participate in the study and would not be penalized for non-participation.
To recruit participants from the community service program, the program mentors would inform both the youth and their parents or guardians of the study and ask if they were interested and wanted to participate. Once the mentors received caregiver permission, I would explain to youth participants the nature and purpose of the study, the study and researchers’ goals, and their rights as study participants before conducting any interviews. There was one youth who declined participation in the study, and one youth the program mentors identified as not a good candidate to participate in the study. I also informed the youth that if they volunteered to participate in this study, anything they shared would be kept confidential and their identity would remain anonymous. I also informed participants that their probation officers and the program mentors would not know what they were disclosing. 5
I informed all study participants that I would maintain their anonymity by de-identifying the data, storing the audio-recordings and de-identified transcripts in a secure location, and password-protecting all documents and data. All participants in the study volunteered to participate, and informed parental consent and informed assent for all youth participants were obtained at both sites, Tradewinds High School and the community service program. During recruitment at all sites, it was emphasized that participation was voluntary and that participation or denial of participation in the study did not impact the participants’ involvement in any of the youth programming at the school or juvenile justice programs, such as court-mandated community service hours or restitution.
The interviews were semi-structured and were completed either at Tradewinds High School in a conference room located in the counseling center or at the community service programs offices. The semi-structured interviews were between 30 minutes and 2 hours and consisted of questions such as, “describe what your experience at school has been like” and “describe what your experience in the juvenile justice system has been like?”
Reflexivity
Reflexivity is a crucial aspect of feminist research by paying attention to identity in relation to power and oppression (Pillow and Mayo 2012). It is an important part of the research process that requires the researcher to consistently question their positionality, their privilege, their intentions, and the part they play as a researcher (Fader 2013; Flores 2016; Rios 2017). As a researcher who is a white woman from a middle-class background in the continental United States, I was aware of my positionality and the differences between the study participants and myself. With a background in ethnographic training, I was aware of my positionality as an outsider to the Native Hawaiian community. As an outsider conducting research in a place with a recent history of colonization, I was consistently reflexive about the traumatic experiences Indigenous communities have had with outside researchers (Tuhiwai-Smith 2012). I was sensitive to my presence as an outsider and demonstrated compassion and care toward the study participants and their narratives by attempting to learn their communities’ histories, as well as providing transparency, consistency, and active listening as a nonjudgmental adult. I was also aware of the role research plays in constructing knowledge, and the power that knowledge has in delegitimizing Indigenous communities in ways that support violence toward them and further marginalization (Tuhiwai-Smith 2012).
In an attempt to maintain reflexivity in this study, I did not engage in “shadow” techniques of ethnography that involve following an individual in “their daily lives” (Rios 2017:168). As this study worked with youth who had engaged in some level of delinquency and/or deviance, observing their daily lives could have resulted in obtaining “guilty knowledge” (Adler and Adler 1998) that could have turned into punitive consequences for participants (Irwin and Umemoto 2016) or reified labels of deviance or criminality. Instead of focusing on the deviant or illegal behavior of the subjects, I highlighted the structural and social processes of youth experiences in navigating institutions of control through the voices of youth amid their journey through the institutional maze.
Data Analysis
A grounded theory (Charmaz 2014) analysis was used to code and analyze all interview transcripts. I engaged in two waves of content analysis for coding data: (1) initial coding and (2) focused coding (Charmaz 2014). In the first wave of initial and open coding, I identified emerging themes such as labeling youth, school disengagement, access to resources, trauma, supportive adults, and the influence of peers. After identifying the initial codes, I developed focused codes to extract the details of the participants’ experiences with education, punishment, and support services. During my focused coding, I revisited the data numerous times to find two main themes: (1) the instability experienced by youth involved in the institutional maze and (2) the role of school punishment as a crucial part of the institutional maze.
Findings
Youth institutions of control in Hawaiʻi maintain structural inequalities that criminalize youth hardships through punishing “problematic” behaviors. Many forms of behavioral misconduct stem from challenges in adolescents’ lives that are not always directly associated with the behavior (Crosby et al. 2015). I found this occurring in the instability that youth experienced prior to, during, and after their time in various youth institutions. I also found that school zero-tolerance policies pushed students out of school and into the criminal justice system.
Instability
Youth in this study experienced instability and ambiguity as they moved between different institutions and faced various attempts at interventions. Instability included unstable housing, missing school, or experiencing inconsistencies in their education, as well as strained relationships with family and peers.
State-Raised Kids
The instability participants experienced within multiple juvenile institutions was particularly prominent for “crossover youth” (Flores et al. 2018) who were involved both in foster care and the juvenile justice system. Patty, a girl at Tradewinds High School, was one such youth who did not feel safe in her foster home and ran away when she was in eighth grade. Patty said she just wanted to “run away from my problems.” Running away is a status offense, and as a foster youth, her actions were policed and regulated more than other youth. She was therefore arrested and placed on probation, becoming a crossover youth.
Kalani, a boy on probation, was another crossover youth. He entered the child welfare system when he was three years old, and after running away, entered the juvenile justice system at 11 years old. He continued to move between the two institutions and traveled further into the juvenile justice system when he was arrested for drug use at 12 years old and sent to drug court. Then, a few years later, he was arrested for robbery. He was in the community service program to assist him with paying restitution for the robbery charge.
State-raised kids also included teens who were not crossover youth but had spent their entire adolescence in the juvenile justice system. Ella, a girl on probation, entered the juvenile justice system when she was 12 years old after she was arrested for breaking into a home to party with her friends. She also described her multiple probation violations during her teenage years because of her substance use and partying. At the time of the interview, she was living at a non-secure detention facility; she was a couple of months away from turning 18 and aging out of the juvenile justice system. She described most of her adolescence as being under some form of state surveillance and control. If she was not being detained or participating in a residential program, she was on probation. When asked how she felt about being in the system for so long, she said, “It’s tiring.” When she reflected on her delinquency and early years in the system, she said, “At that time, I was young, and I wanted to party and stuff. I dunno. I was just lost.”
Family Separation and Instability
Kekoa did not describe his home life as unsafe, yet he described multiple experiences with instability. One occurred around the time he was interviewed for this study. “I actually get kicked out on Sunday . . . the day after graduation,” Kekoa, an 18-year-old Native Hawaiian graduating senior at Tradewinds High School, explained. Kekoa’s family was low-income and had been homeless at one point when Kekoa was in elementary school. Kekoa lived in a small two-bedroom apartment with his parents and four siblings. His mom worked late nights, and his dad was not working due to health issues. He said he was being kicked out because he got into an argument with his mom the day before Mother’s Day and did not come home on Mother’s Day to spend the day with her. Kekoa said he received a phone call from his mom that night saying he had to pack his stuff and be out of the house the day after graduation. He planned on moving in with his girlfriend, who lived at home with her parents, which was about a two-hour bus ride from his parents’ home. He was not working but was hoping to get a job through an internship he was planning to start shortly after graduation. At 18 years old, he was graduating high school, did not have a job, did not have a driver’s license or car, and was being kicked out of his family home.
In addition to these life changes and challenges, Kekoa had experienced other life hardships, such as homelessness and domestic violence in a previous romantic relationship, which led Kekoa to struggle with school engagement. He mentioned that he almost dropped out in his senior year of high school. He said, “My junior year, before summer, I was going to drop out. I was like, man, why am I even in school? I can just leave.” He said what changed his mind about dropping out was the experience he had in his summer internship the summer before his senior year of high school, and when he started dating his girlfriend that same summer. He decided when the fall semester started his senior year, that he would go back to school and “bust my ass and work.” While he did not officially drop out, he was very close to doing so. Fortunately, the opportunity of his summer internship and romantic relationship pulled him back into school and provided him with new goals and a sense of stability outside of his family home.
Ricky, a boy on probation, experienced compounding upheavals that he coped with by using substances. Ricky said he had “been through a lot” with his family and that, “Itʻs not just me getting in trouble like before any of this [justice-involvement] has ever happened. Like it all came from family issues in court.” The custody battle during his parents’ divorce led to instability in Ricky’s living situation. He moved back and forth between his mother, who lived in Hawaiʻi, and his father, who lived in the continental United States. He described using marijuana as a way to cope with the family instability he experienced. His substance use was his entry into institutional control—he was first suspended at school for marijuana possession, and two years later, arrested for breaking and entering a home while intoxicated. Ricky mentioned he had asked his probation officer for additional support services, such as therapists, as he recognized his need for these forms of support services that he found to be helpful.
Living situations for youth were often inconsistent, meaning some teens moved frequently, while others lived with different family members over time and, in extreme cases, experienced homelessness. The unstable life experiences and hardships teens faced point to structural inequalities developed and maintained through colonialism, such as poverty, housing insecurity, and family separation. Institutions of control assist in maintaining these disconnections and power relations through constructing structural inequalities that create unstable life circumstances that limit upward mobility and can have similar effects on youth of any ethnicity who become enmeshed in them. As a result of unstable or distressing living situations, teens in this study would sometimes run away and live on the street or in youth shelters, become incarcerated, or enter the child welfare system. The dynamic journey of confusion and volatility of multiple youth institutions of control created uncertainty and a lack of stability for youth as they navigated through different institutions.
School Punishment
In addition to instability, school punishment provided an entry point for some participants into multiple youth institutions of control. By acting as an entry point, schools work with other institutions by removing “problematic” students from school, often by reporting or referring them to the juvenile justice system. The reporting and referral process can range from police being called to the school to make an arrest or a police report filed, to school officials filing a notice with the family court that results in a court summons. Schools’ participation in the institutional maze demonstrates the complexity of navigating through and exiting institutions of control.
Elijah, a boy on probation, had multiple exposures to and experiences within the juvenile justice system that all stemmed from school. His first juvenile justice experience occurred in the eighth grade when he was arrested at school and issued an ACT 90 suspension 6 for marijuana possession. During his 90-day suspension, he was sent to an alternative school. He preferred attending the alternative school because of the smaller student population. He preferred “small circles,” which included smaller class sizes because he said there were “less problems” in smaller groups. In other words, he felt safer in smaller groups. He did not want to return to his traditional school upon completion of his suspension, but he was forced to, nonetheless. Elijah’s preference for attending an alternative school is interesting, as research has noted the use of alternative schools as an extension of the carceral state and forms of punitive discipline that further exclude students from school (Flores 2016; Selman 2017).
In his freshman year of high school, Elijah was chronically absent and considered a truant 7 . When asked why he was missing school, he said, “I just wake up late and don’t feel like going to school.” His truancy led him to be pulled back into the juvenile justice system. He was not arrested but was notified by a school counselor that he would have to go to court because he missed too much school. He said he was mad and scared when he found out because “I didn’t know what was going to happen next.” He went to court and was assigned a probation officer and 40 hours of community service. After his court summons for truancy, he was instilled with a new fear of the consequences of not going to school and how that could push him further into the juvenile justice system. However, even with the fear of the legal repercussions for continued absence, Elijah still struggled to wake up in time for school. His mother had a demanding work schedule and was unable to always assist him in getting to school. His family structure placed the responsibility on him to get to school on time.
Alyssa’s story also demonstrates how schools work with the courts to push students into institutions. In the seventh grade, Alyssa, a girl on probation, and two of her friends were arrested at school for writing a threat on a bathroom wall on campus. The experience of being arrested at school was traumatic for Alyssa. She said as they walked out of the classroom and turned the corner, “The cops all came and then they all handcuffed us.” She said the experience was “pretty scary. Like, I was just in shock the whole time.” Fortunately, she was not incarcerated but was suspended for a week. The terror she felt during the experience of being arrested and questioned at the police station was a wake-up call for Alyssa to change her behavior. She thought the incident was behind her after she had completed her suspension, and she focused on improving her behavior and grades.
Unfortunately, a year later, she received a court subpoena for her arrest at school. The lack of communication and understanding of the legal situation or process had left Alyssa and her family with the impression that her case had been closed once she completed her week-long suspension. However, the subpoena she received showed that she had never left the system. Alyssa said that when she got her summons, she had already “[forgotten] about [the arrest]. I was like, Why am I going to court?!” When she went to court, it was her first time discovering that she would be on probation. She described the first time meeting her probation officer (PO):
My PO was telling me, you look lost. Do you even know what you’re doing here? And I was like um, no. Honestly, I have no idea of what I’m doing here. He was like oh. And then he went like looking all his files. He was like oh you’re here for the stuff with the middle school . . . And then I was like, oh my goodness!
What was additionally frustrating for Alyssa was that while she had complied with the court summons, the other two girls involved in the incident did not show up to the multiple court dates, even though they had been summoned. Alyssa did not feel it was fair for her to have to go through this experience when she did not actually write the threat herself. She was only the “lookout” to make sure no one was coming while the other two girls wrote on the wall. Fortunately for Alyssa, the judge adjudicated her to 18 hours of community service, which led her to the community service program. Alyssa was relieved to only have 18 hours of community service and found the program to provide some level of stability within a confusing system.
The multidimensional aspects of youth’s lives made navigating the complexity of institutional control challenging. The difficulties included the instability youth found in daily hardships that were exacerbated once they entered or experienced multiple forms of institutional control, particularly for “cross-over youth” or “state-raised youth.” In addition, the harsh punitive responses of zero-tolerance policies that pushed teens in this study out of school and, for many, into the juvenile justice system, demonstrated neoliberal ideologies of responsibilization. The lack of consideration for the motivation behind the behavior or for the role of structural inequalities demonstrated the emphasis of responsibilization, with limited resources available and accessible to them.
Discussion and Conclusion
The complexity of youth’s lives and their journeys through different mechanisms of institutional control illustrates the challenges youth experienced when navigating and trying to leave the institutional maze. These findings reveal a prevailing multi-institutional process that I refer to as an institutional maze. This maze consists of intersections of various youth institutions that create difficult pathways toward conformity that are confusing and difficult for youth to navigate and exit institutional control. The maze did not provide one course for the youth to travel; it was filled with twists and turns that often did not make sense and were frustrating. For example, Alyssa’s experience of being surprised by a court summons a year after she and her friends vandalized a bathroom wall at school, or Elijah learning from a school counselor that he had to go to court for truancy. This work demonstrates how structural inequalities are embedded in juvenile justice, education, and child protective services that shape the lives of youth in ways that amplify instability and experiences with school punishment practices that increase the chances of youth entering institutions of control and ultimately make it difficult for them to exit the maze.
The relationship among multiple youth institutions that made up the maze led to instability for many participants. Teens struggled with navigating the many twists and turns of the institutional maze presented to them. Some young people moved frequently between different institutions and services, which increased the instability in their lives (Lopez 2017). This was especially prominent for teens who were in both the foster care and juvenile justice systems, also referred to as crossover youth, such as Patty and Kalani. Patty’s and Kalani’s experiences demonstrated instability for youth caught in both institutions, which included the lack of support, particularly from adults or parental-type figures they felt safe with and could turn to for guidance.
Furthermore, it is difficult to remove oneself from the grips of institutional control and negative labels when exposed or involved in different institutions like the juvenile justice system and/or child welfare system. Risk factors and participation in risky behaviors for foster youth were similar to non-institutionally involved youth, “but their affiliation with the child welfare system makes them more visible and thus more likely to be identified as ‘delinquent’” (Flores et al. 2018:150). Similarly, researchers have found that youth identified as “at-risk” and those who receive interventions are more likely to be labeled as delinquent (McAra and McVie 2010). The delinquent label increases their likelihood for future interactions with the juvenile justice system (McAra and McVie 2010). Thus, their exposure to other institutions of control, such as the juvenile justice system, is heightened as they are already under state supervision (Flores et al. 2018; Lopez 2017). For example, many justice-involved teens, especially girls, run away as a coping mechanism or survival strategy (Chesney-Lind and Bilsky 2011; Chesney-Lind and Shelden 2014; Lopez 2017).
Conducting a study focusing on the connection between schools and the juvenile justice system in Hawaiʻi brings histories of colonization into the context of examining systems of youth punishment. Youth institutions of control assisted in maintaining structural inequalities through the discipline and punishment of youth and their “problematic” behaviors. The racialized hierarchies and socioeconomic stratification that were developed through colonization and the development of the modern patriarchal nation-state are embedded in the mechanisms and processes of youth institutional control and conceptions of who is viewed as deviant, criminal, and what behaviors are seen as troublesome. Hawaiʻi’s recent history of colonization provided a site to closely examine the intersection of historical or collective trauma (Alexander et al. 2004), racialized hierarchies, socioeconomic stratification, and youth punishment. Racialized and classed structures that historically limited marginalized groups from accessing education and employment were evident in the negative stereotyping and criminalization of youth. Institutions that were formed for oppressive purposes have similar effects on youth of any ethnicity who become involved in them, especially when we take into consideration different interlocking forms of oppression evident in structural violence, such as patriarchy, class, and racialization. This extended to youth in this study 8 and their difficult experiences with education and the criminal justice system.
While this study focused on the experiences of youth in Hawaiʻi, the findings can be applied more broadly to communities outside of Hawaiʻi through the reconceptualization of the school-to-prison pipeline as an institutional maze. Reconceptualizing in this way can assist in providing more of an understanding of the confusion, variety of experiences with the interconnected systems of youth institutions, and the overall difficulties youth experience when navigating the maze. The concept of the institutional maze also demonstrates the challenges of exiting institutions of control, particularly for marginalized youth. This reconceptualization can assist in providing a more comprehensive way of understanding the experiences of youth navigating through multiple institutions of control.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to the participants in this study for sharing their experiences with me. I am grateful to my colleagues at the University of Hawaiʻi for their collaboration and assistance with gaining entry and data collection at a research site for this study. Appreciation is conveyed for colleagues at Mississippi State University for the helpful comments and constructive suggestions throughout the development of this research manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
