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Article Excerpt
Interviewer: What was the first thing you did when you were released from secure care [last time]?
Participant: The first day I got out I done crime.... Done another motor vehicle high speed chase.
Interviewer: You did? And ... can you put your finger on how come that happened? Participant: I didn't have ... much of support, like. (A, 60:41). (1)
Participant: [Of the last two and a bit years] I've spent 132 days out in the community and 650 days incarcerated. (B, 18:20, aged 17).
I. INTRODUCTION
This Article details the prospective and retrospective narratives of young men aged fifteen to twenty years who have lived through successive cycles of custodial sentences and release--and who have often done so in relation to juvenile and adult correctional facilities. (2) Specifically, it engages a grounded, "client"-oriented approach to the problem not simply of juvenile repeat incarceration, but of the incredibly high rates of progression from juvenile to adult custodial spheres. (3) Very little research has sought to follow a group of young men through their respective pathways from juvenile detention to adult imprisonment. The current Article can therefore be viewed as an attempt to bring the lived experiences of incarceration and release to the fore--a means for making apparent the various hopes and challenges associated with what is broadly accepted to be a critically important time during "the life course." (4) Importantly though, my immediate objectives have less to do with documenting patterns of behavior or overarching trends in "criminal careers" than with presenting and examining the meanings attributed by young men to various events and circumstances that arise during the course of such "careers." The Article is divided into three parts. First, a brief overview of the research project generating the data referred to throughout this piece is given. Second, and more substantially, the experiences of eighteen young men interviewed on two or more occasions over the last four years are brought to the fore. My aim here is to draw out the kinds of issues that tend to remain obscured when discussing the "pains of release" in more general or abstract terms. How could one know, for instance, that setting an alarm clock--having the money to buy an alarm clock--would feature prominently in the context of post-release for some young men? And how could one know, except by talking to those who have attempted the transition from custodial time to street time on numerous occasions, the extent to which feelings of shame or ineptitude work against asking for (emotional or financial) assistance when the young men can see no way out of their predicament except through committing further offenses (and risking further periods of confinement)? In the final part of the Article, I suggest an alternative way of thinking about who or "what" gets released from custody and explore some of the implications this might have for smoothing the transition from, in the words of McAllister et al., (5) custody to community.
Broadly, then, my aim is to challenge the notion that young men released from custodial settings automatically pose a risk to themselves or to society more generally. Instead, I want to wrest the propensity for things to fall apart or go wrong away from individuals (an overtly political and under-interrogated term), and place it firmly within the risky systems of post-release administration to which young men are subjected. Without doubt, there are "youthful" activities which carry the substantial risk of arrest, court appearance, and further custodial time. But, and more to the point, there are also programs and procedures which, far from working to foster desistance from offending, literally assemble the conditions for recidivism and repeat incarceration.
These conditions, as I will show, are very often nascent within release plans and attach themselves to the resident or inmate about to cross the perimeter of the custodial complex into the community. This, therefore, is the main story I want to tell here--the story of how young men return to custody not solely because of their behavior, but because of their responses to systems and procedures which, in an alarmingly high number of instances, steer people (back) into crime oriented pathways rather than clear of them.
II. SUMMARY OF RESEARCH PROJECT
The Understanding Recidivism and Repeat Incarceration of Young Male Offenders: A Biographical and Longitudinal Approach project commenced in September 2003 and will conclude in December 2008. The study has been designed to record the experiences and perception of young men aged fifteen to twenty-four who are subject to repeat cycles of incarceration, and, more pointedly, to the pains of confinement associated with doing time in juvenile and adult custodial spheres. To date, forty-seven unique participants have been interviewed for this research. Of this number, twenty-five young men have been interviewed on two or more occasions in keeping with their cycles of release and reincarceration.
Collectively, these twenty-five people have endured 20,646 custodial days, equivalent to fifty-six years of confinement (with this figure excluding time served in adult custodial environments, see Table 1). The themes emerging from conversations with this latter group of young men (aged fifteen to twenty) form the basis of the present Article. (6) Above all else--and in keeping with a constructivist approach (7) to the problem of repeat imprisonment--I sought to allow people to talk with me using their conceptual building blocks and (sub)cultural lexicons and for me to avoid--at all costs--the problems which attend drawing too narrow a frame around what researchers think people in custody should be saying or complaining about as against what these same people would like to say given an "open-ended" opportunity to talk. As previously mentioned, forty-seven young men have, as of May 2007, been interviewed for this research: twenty-two on one occasion; seventeen on two occasions; five on three occasions; and three young men on four occasions. The sentences served by these young people have ranged in length from two months to just over five years and have been levied for offenses including possession of an illegal substance with intent to supply, home invasion, illegal use of a motor vehicle, endangering life, armed robbery, serious assault, and grievous bodily harm. (8) Each of the young men interviewed had served at least one detention order prior to turning fifteen years of age. More strikingly--especially given the overriding formal commitment to rehabilitation within the juvenile system--since the commencement of the study in September 2003, twenty-five of the thirty-eight unique participants interviewed who are eligible by age (eighteen years) to be admitted to prison have progressed to the adult custodial environment--that is, have been released from juvenile detention, committed further offenses, been arrested, been either remanded to the adult system or convicted, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
With this brief overview in mind, I move now to the main part of the Article--the recounting of participants' sense of what they expected to occur once released as against their accounts of what actually happened. I will then move to deal with the implications of these scenarios.
III. RHETORIC AND REALITY OF RELEASE
It is, quite clearly, impossible to detail all the nuances of each participant's situation pertaining to release and return to custody. Accordingly, and at the risk of doing some violence to the original integrity of these stories, I have chosen to group participants' experiences into several themes which emerged from close and repeated readings of each of the transcripts. Of the eighteen substantive stories analyzed for this Article, eleven straddle the juvenile and adult custodial spheres. Although many common issues were raised by each participant, there is one theme I wish to mention at the outset of this Article, as it sets the tone for the narratives as a whole. This theme concerns the overriding optimism displayed by each young person about to embark on release--an optimism that emerged in spite of having been returned to custody many times previously. Indeed, only two of the eighteen participants expressed the view that there was a better than even chance they would again be incarcerated. Of those who had not yet entered the adult system, all were firmly of the belief they would work their way out of offending prior to turning eighteen. In short, no one believed they were going to the "big house."
Participant: I'll be able to change my shit around.... Yeah, even [given] how much I've been in trouble, I've just thought, "Nah, I won't be one to go there [i.e., to prison]." ... I've just thought, I don't know, I just--I've always kind of thought, I'll just click out of it. (D, 44:36).
Interviewer: Can I ask you, what makes you so sure [you won't one day go to prison]?
Participant: 'Cause I'm gonna do the right thing now. I've said, "This is enough, enough." I'm not--I've had enough, you know, being locked up. It's just wasting my life. (E, 34:1). (9)
As a researcher--and even with the advent of hindsight--it is incredibly difficult to know what weight to attach to these predictions. (10) Moreover, I have often thought it somewhat problematic to be asking someone to comment on what may or may not occur at some future point in time (especially somebody who has been forcibly removed for extended periods from the routines and happenings of so-called conventional life). Nonetheless, my sense is that these young men want desperately to believe they will "make good" (11)-that it is this belief, this sense of hope (however marred by the weight of past experience) that predominantly sustains the sense of future for each participant. The sense of hope--whether connected to being reunited with a guardian recovering from drug abuse, or earning a diploma at a technical college, or living in one's own house, or being able to start again in a town where no one knows who they are or what they have been through--these scenographies (12) of hope transcend the weight of all probable realities for these young men. Having said this, I am also convinced that hope is underpinned by and constantly morphs into and out of states of despair. Mary Zournazi, (13) for example, notes the complicity of hope and despair--that one works its way into the other, one is borne of the other. And more than this, that the two can subsist at one and the same time within each of us--and, especially, within those spoken with in custodial environments. Indeed, I think the narratives of custody and release detailed in this study need to be understood as the product of the tension--the scurrying back and forth--between feelings of hope and states of despair or disillusionment. Each of us--but especially young people in lock-up--are positioned precariously and critically between known outcomes and unknown potentials (even where these unknown potentials are given a predictable form by administrators in light of offense and detention histories). The following extended excerpts--drawn from a young man who I have interviewed four times over the last three years--speak powerfully to the highs and lows experienced by those in custody and who are asked to comment on their future pathways.
Interview 1, October 24, 2003 (third detention order)
Participant: I've done nine months in Cavan and then I got out. Stayed out for three weeks and I come back in and ... I'm doing five months now.... Before that in Magill [Training Centre] I done about six months. (A, 4:20).
Participant: [Next time] I feel like that I am going to get somewhere.... I've started realizing that crime isn't the way to go.... I've had enough of being in here and not being there for my girlfriend.
Interviewer: Okay.... What will you be able to do when you get out of Cavan now, that you couldn't do [in the past]?
Participant: Get a job.
Interviewer: And why can you get a job now but you couldn't [last time]?
Participant: Cause I got everything that I need, my resume.... [I've got] [m]y certificates. Metalwork certificate. That's pretty handy ... engineering ... computing skills, typing skills.
Interviewer: So when you get out, you think you'll be able to use them?
Participant: Definitely. (A, 61:41).
Interview 2, October 14, 2004 (fourth detention order)
Interviewer: How long [did you stay out]?
Participant: Five days ... [because I breached my conditions].... I come here for two weeks [to] finish off my conditional.... [Then on my release] I [started] a suspended sentence for eighteen months.... I reoffended and I was on the run for a month.... Then I got a D.O. [detention order] for eleven months. (A, 4:46, I2).
Participant: The [support] people said, "Yeah, [A], when you get out [we]'ll help you out, you know, as much as we can," you know. "As much as you want [us] to," you know.... So I thought, "All right then." Didn't help me or nothing. I tried to ask them [for help]. Nothing.... "Yeah, I'll be there in a minute, [A]." Nothing.
Interviewer: So you feel as though they've let you down?
Participant: Yeah, FAYS [Department for Families and Youth Services] workers, man, they're dogs to tell you the truth.... When they say ... "I know what you're going through," you know, no one does, you know, no one.... No one in the world will ever know what you go through because, I mean, they aren't in our life. (A, 22:15, I2).
Interviewer: What do you think your chances are of staying out?
Participant: Good.... A 100%.
Interviewer: You think you'll do okay.
Participant: I know for a fact I will. (A, 27:36, 12).
Interview 3, August 9, 2005 (fifth detention order)
Interviewer: Since I last spoke to you.... you were released, charged, [sent] back in and released, charged and [sent] back in.... [Since you'll be out in four months], [w]hat do you want to do [when you're released]?
Participant: I haven't been ... thinking [about that] cause it's not close for me to getting out.... I'm just going to take it day by day.... I'm not going to plan nothing. I'm just going to take it day by day. (A, 27:52, I3).
Interviewer: [D]o you feel confident about the future?
Participant: At the moment I'm thinking that my life is just going to go down the drain 'cause I've been locked up for so long and ... I don't know ... what it's like on the outside any more because I'm not out for that long ... to notice what it's like out there. (A, 31:20, I3).
Interview 4, March 17, 2006 (sixth detention order)
Interviewer: What happened after [you were released]?
Participant: I got locked back up 'cause I stole a car ... about four days [after I got out].... I stayed at my girlfriend's for one night and then went out stealing.... I was on morphine, speed and that.... I got in a couple of high speed chases and lost 'em, did some ram raids for alcohol. (A, 2:24, I4).
Interviewer: What do you think, sitting here now, what do you think your chances [of staying out] are next time around--'cause I know you've been through a lot.
Participant: I think my chances will be the same as usual--take it as it goes.... I used to think [ahead into the future] but now I've learnt, you know, just to take it day by day ... when that big day comes for me, getting out, then I'll start planning it--that day I'll start planning stuff, you know.... I'm hoping that my girlfriend will stay with me, that I can have a family, and then my whole life will change, that's what I'm hoping. (A, 27:34, I4).
It is possible in these passages to detect something of the rise and fall of hope--of that intangible yet very material force that permits one to reckon with what may or may not eventuate. As of his eighteenth birthday, the young man quoted above had spent 1272 days in custody--having received his first detention order at age eleven. He had also endured bouts of homelessness, alcoholism, completed only eight years of schooling, survived being two weeks in a coma as a result of being trapped in a burning car (which his brother had set ablaze without realizing there was someone still in the vehicle), and dealt with the lifelong knowledge that he had been rejected by both his parents (to the point where his mother changed her phone number so that her son could not call her from lockup). (14) This recounting, quite clearly, is only the barest outline of the nodal points that comprise this young person's life and that partially frame the context within which confinement and release occur. However, this brief excursion should be enough--prior to examining a wider array of post-release narratives--to raise serious questions about how hope is sustained in the face of repeatedly being let down by processes designed to assist young people in times of overwhelming adversity. In this context, I want to explicitly and steadfastly refrain from charging each of the participants in this research with being unrealistic about their future or their probability of making good. I also want to avoid charging that it is the over-inflated sense of self-reliance and optimism generally evinced by young men about to be released from custody that should somehow be translated as the primary causes of breaching or re-offending. Instead, I want to try to understand the conditions that produce this preparedness--this necessity--to repeatedly reassemble hope out of quite desperate situations.
In descending order of prevalence, the key themes that emerged from interviews concerned: housing, peers, drugs/alcohol, money, coping with administrative shortcomings, and dealing with tragedy. Although familiar, I aim to bring each of these issues to life through relaying the struggles associated with participants' lived experience. (15) For the record, the shortest time between release and being brought back into custody for the twenty-five participants was, in whole figure terms, one month and the longest was twenty-eight months (with the average time being around seven months). (16) The objective now is to relay the key themes emerging from interviews, commencing with the vexed issue of housing and accommodation.
A. HOUSING (THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE)
The importance of a stable and secure place to live has been mentioned countless times both within and beyond the context of post-release support. (17) What is less common within this literature is the relaying of the views of those who struggle with the issue of housing and homelessness on a daily or intermittent basis. Accordingly, my aim here is to provide a client-based narrative plinth to the general catch-cry that housing--which I take to include both physical attributes (bricks, mortar, plumbing, heating, and so forth) and psychical dimensions (the ability to cultivate a meaningful sense of place through time)--needs to form the basis of any attempt to keep young men out of custody. In the vast majority of instances, the young men in this research have encountered numerous problems on the road to securing or being able to hold onto stable accommodation. Three sub-themes emerged here: delays in provision of accommodation, problematic placements, and insufficient familiarity with the demands of domestic life.
1. Delays in Provision of Accommodation
A colleague (18) once described how the young person involved in repeat cycles of incarceration can be metaphorically conceived as a patient on the operating table in critical condition. Under such conditions, even a seemingly minor event (such as exposure to everyday germs or viruses) can send the patient into cardiac arrest--the inference being that things which would not normally matter to "healthy" persons can profoundly affect those whose health has already been severely compromised. It is the same with young men about to embark on another period of release--conditional or otherwise. Here, events which seem trivial to those leading conventional lives--or who have good links with traditional or majoritarian networks--are experienced very differently by those released from custody. Having to wait a few extra weeks (or even days) for suitable accommodation is a good example of the mundane presenting as extraordinarily stressful to ex-residents and prisoners.
Interview 2, October 14, 2004 (third detention order)
Interviewer: [W]hen you're next released, what will you do differently from last time ...?
Participant: Well, this time I'm getting my own house, my own one-bedroom unit.... Because, yeah, being at home brings me down. At my mum's, you know, got to cook and clean for myself anyway.... You know. She drinks all day.... Yeah, so that doesn't help. So then I drink with her. (G, 42:51, I2).
Interview 3, August 9, 2005 (fourth detention order)
Participant: Once I was out of here [i.e., juvenile detention] they just sort of forgot about me.... I was meant to move into my house the day after I was released. Then I got a phone call saying, "No, you can't move in."... This went on for ... a few weeks.... I got out on the Thursday. On the Friday they said, "Sorry, we don't have it."... Then the next Friday they said, "No, we'll ring you on Monday." Monday I didn't get a phone call, and, yeah. And at my mum's it's not very good because she drinks a bit and then when she drinks, I'll drink with her.
Interviewer: So that's where you were staying, at your mum's house?
Participant: Yeah.... You know, like, if I wasn't at my mum's, that kid [who I've done crime with before] wouldn't have been walking past the front of my house, you know.... [And] at first when I when I seen him I didn't think about doing crime.... I just thought, you know, have a drink with an old mate.... And then once we had a drink I thought, you know, "Oh, yeah." We were talking about old times and then ... "Do you want to do this?"
Interviewer: Right. And so you're back in here.
Participant: [Now] I'm just thinking, you know.... they [i.e., the workers] keep shitting on me, you know. I think, you know, if they really want me to have a good chance at succeeding, you know, you'd think they'd want to help as much as they can.... [But the staff in here only do their job] to look good in front of the big bosses.... When the big boss is around they're doing work. (G, 2:4, I3).
Another example of delays in housing having serious consequences can be seen in the following account:
Participant: [I was living at my sister's while] I was waiting for a house, and I would have had a house probably like two days after I got locked up. Like I was waiting for one, and I really stuffed it up and it was really close to [where I was going to school].... I was on a waiting list for roughly about five months toward the end of my D.O. to get one through the salvation army.... It would have been my own outreach house that I could rent myself.... That's what I wanted to do.... I knew that it was meant to be happening, I knew that I wouldn't be at my sister's forever, but it was taking a real long time. They kept saying that, "Oh, it should come up in the next few weeks."... Eventually they said, "Oh you've got one ... but there's damage and we'll need to fix it ... but by then I was going off the rails.... I'd say [after] about a month [of waiting for a place] ... I started to want to hang around with other mates.... I'd go there after school and drink...
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