1st Edition
Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice Scaffolding as Structure
This book is an ethnographic examination of the young people who serve voluntarily as judges, advocates and other court personnel at the Red Hook Youth Court (RHYC) in Brooklyn, New York—a juvenile diversion program designed to prevent the formal processing of juvenile offenders—usually first-time offenders—for low-level offenses (such as fare evasion, truancy, vandalism) within the juvenile justice system.
Focusing on the nine-to-ten-week long unpaid training program that the young people undergo prior to becoming RHYC members, this book offers a detailed description of young people’s experiences learning about crime, delinquency, justice, and law. Combining moments of self-reflection and autobiographical elements into largely "uncooked" fieldnotes, the book seeks to demonstrate the hegemonic operations of a court (the Red Hook Community Justice Center (RHCJC)—a multi-jurisdictional problem-solving court and community center where the RHYC is housed), the processes in which it secures belief in formal justice and the rule of law, ensures consent to be governed, and reproduces existing social structures.
An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, law, sociology, and youth justice, as well as to those undertaking ethnographic research on young people, crime and justice.
"Sign Me Up!": Recruiting Kids for the Red Hook Youth Court: An Introduction, 1. A Typical RHYC Training Schedule, 2. Week I: What to do When Stopped by the Police Workshop, 3. Week I: Welcome and Introduction to the Red Hook Youth Court and Understanding the Youth Court/Restorative Justice, 4. Week II: Offenses, Consequences, and Sanctions, 5. Week II: Understanding the Youth Offender, 6. Week III: Critical Thinking, 7. Week III: Objectivity, 8. Week IV: Precision Questioning/Courtroom Demeanor, 9. Week IV: Roles of the Court, 10. Week V: Judge and Bailiff, 11. Week V: Community Advocate Opening Statements, 12. Week VI: Community Advocate Closing Statements, 13. Week VI: Pre-Hearing Interview/Youth Advocate Opening and Closing Statements, 14. Week VII: Youth Advocate Closing Statements (Continued), 15. Week VII: Customer Service, 16. (A) Conclusion (of Sorts), Postscript: Drifts, Drift and Chronicles
Biography
Avi Brisman is a Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, USA, an Adjunct Professor in the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and an Honorary Professor at Newcastle Law School at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
With Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice, Avi Brisman provides us an in-depth, close-up and invaluable look at the raw material and initial insights that ethnographic accounts are built upon. Weaving moments of self-reflection and biographical tidbits into raw fieldnotes, this book lifts the veil on the research and idea-building process. This rich, novel and highly readable contribution may help to catalyze the next wave of qualitative studies of crime and justice – and it will be particularly valuable and energizing to those heading out into the field for the first time.
Randy Myers, University of Washington, Tacoma
The poet Walt Whitman wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes." Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice is large, too, as measured not by word count but by the multitude of intellectual endeavors it contains. In it Avi Brisman ruminates on crime and criminology, sustains an engaged conversation with the young people and staff members he studies, and constructs an innovative text that is both prequel and sequel to his existing scholarship. Interwoven with all this are a backstage autoethnography of the research process and a rich account of its day-to-day particulars – and beyond that, a multitude of insights that escape the boundaries of conventional criminological writing.
Jeff Ferrell, author of Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge
