Ethical and Responsive Methods for Interviewing Justice System–Involved Young People

• In Event: Adapted Interview Approaches With Students of Color in Urban Schools and Settings

Abstract

Annually, approximately 1,470,000 youth under age 18 are arrested in the U.S. (Sickmund & Puzzanchera, 2014). Existing research indicates that youth who have been arrested are more likely to be socially isolated, have low educational attainment, and continue to be system-involved through adulthood. In order to disrupt these patterns, families, practitioners, and policy-makers need information about the underlying mechanisms through which contact with the police and courts results in these undesirable outcomes during young people’s transition to adulthood. However, the vast majority of research on youth arrest relies on jurisdictional administrative data or the accounts of adult practitioners working in the justice system. While these are important sources of information, they can only provide a partial account of the role that being arrested plays in the lives of young people. By virtue of their lived experience, youth who have been arrested are a critical yet often overlooked source of information. At the same time, because of their age and justice-system involvement, young people who have been arrested constitute a vulnerable population, which requires researchers to take additional steps to minimize the risks associated with participating in a research project. Additionally, rates of youth arrest are highest among Black male youth who have experienced trauma and have histories of truancy and school exclusion. In this paper, I describe the methods I used to adapt Seidman’s (2013) protocol for phenomenological interviewing with twenty (n=20) young men whose first arrest occurred before age 18 and who were currently 18 to 24 years old. In keeping with the phenomenological paradigm, the goal of the study was to collect a temporal account of the experiences of youth who have been arrested that focused on their subjective experience of being arrested and how they made meaning of their arrest in the broader context of their lives. Following Seidman’s (2013) approach I conducted three interviews with each participant, however I developed activities to support youth through a cognitively taxing series of interviews. In the first interview, I guided participants through the process of chronologically plotting the events of their lives on life graphs. This emerging technique has been effective in research with youth (D’Sa, 2013) because it provides a tangible account that can be revisited and amended during an interview. In the second interview, participants completed social network maps depicting the closeness of their relationships to peers, family, and schools and 24-hour logs detailing how they typically spent their time. The third and final interview focused on participants’ reflections on how their arrests fit into their life histories and current experiences. In contrast to the two previous interviews, the third interview required participants to engage in a rigorous reflective exercise. To assist adolescent participants in the meaning-making process, I presented them with their life graphs, social network maps, and daily schedules, and referred to these artifacts throughout the interview. Collectively, this three-interview series enabled me to collect data directly pertaining to how arrests shape youth experiences, while being responsive to the unique needs of this sample population.

Author

• Abena Subira Mackall, Harvard University