The ART of apologizing : Entering the black box of an intervention program

• During recent decades, evidence-based treatment programs havebecome a given part of the youth justice system. Typically, such programs areevaluated through quantitative effect studies, in which a variety of outcomemeasures play a significant role. This case study offers an alternative, interactionalevaluation of a treatment program. More specifically, the analysis focuses on anAggression Replacement Training (ART) session that was held at a youth detentionhome in Sweden. In this session, two trainers and three detained adolescent boysperform an exercise that serves to teach the latter various apology practices. Adetailed, conversation analytic examination of the interaction in the session showsthat the trainers repeatedly problematize the boys’ contributions in a kind ofdeviant-making enterprise. Thus, rather than recognizing competencies that dobecome visible through closer inspection, the trainers one-sidedly highlight lackand deficiency. It is argued that the interpretative frame of ART, with its focus onpathologization, individualization, and responsibilization, amplifies the incarceratedboys’ deviancy, hence symbolically locking them up in a second, nonmaterialor discursive, sense.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Work (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

youth justice

youth detention home

Aggression Replacement Training (ART)

psychoeducation

interpretative frame

conversation analysis

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)