"I Love Working With 'At-Risk Youth'": Paradox, Problem, and Possibility in a Community-Based Government Organization

• In Event: 28.090 - MTCC Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: 28.090-2 - Black and Latinx Youth Identities in Action: Activism, Affirmation, and Exclusion Within Community-Based Spaces

Abstract

Overview: School policies and practices entangled with the school-to-prison nexus include an increasing number of in- and out-of-school suspensions, the use of behavior modification classrooms and alternative school placements, the involvement of school resource officers (SROs), aggressive disciplinary policies like zero tolerance, the criminalization of non-violent offenses such as fighting, disruption of classes, and the ticketing and arrests for status offenses. These policies and practices illuminate the connections between education and incarceration of which Black, Latinx, and Native American youth are the most targeted and overrepresented groups in behavioral and disciplinary referrals (Fowler, 2007; Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010; Public Policy Research Institute, 2005). A site of intervention for these referrals are community-based government organizations, of which these groups are overrepresented as well.

Community-based government organizations are commonly constructed as youth-centered, asset and/or strength-based, culturally competent programs, and services accessible to communities that provide resources and responds to myriad needs of youth and their families, such as assistance obtaining school uniforms and tutoring, as well as more complex support and diversionary services to “at-risk” and court involved youth. This paper interrogates the ways in which a community-based government organization, No Wrong Door (NWD), functions as paradox, problem, and possibility within the school-to-prison nexus, in the state of Texas, known to have prosecuted twice as many youth on truancy charges than any other state, resulting in referrals to court (Fowler, Schmid, Johnson, & Craven, 2015; Meiners, 2007). Particular attention is paid to the organization’s prevention and intervention services which seeks to respond to myriad reasons for referral of a majority Black and Latinx youth population from low-income backgrounds, marginal schools, and disinvested neighborhoods.

Theories/Methods: This paper is informed by data collected as part of a broader study that examines the paradoxical ways of the State within a community-embedded government intervention program/organization and how Black and Latinx youth experience them as an alternative to traditional school and court punishment. Labeling theory, governmentality, youth control complex, and anti-blackness contribute to conceptualizing the nuanced encounters and experiences of youth in their home, school, community, with service providers, and NWD staff. Additionally, it helps contextualize inimical settings, personnel, policies, and practices that frame, [mis-]serve, and dispose youth. This study takes a critical qualitative approach to observe staff in their regular work setting where youth are seen to gain valuable insight of practices, processes, partners, and contexts they implement toward their organizational goals of reducing the possibilities of youth entering more formal child welfare and juvenile justice systems. As such, this research takes a case study approach using ethnographic methods consisting of semi-structured interviews, participant observations and document analysis at NWD.

Findings/Implications: This study’s findings illuminate wholesale implementation of youth-centered, strength based, culturally competent services is challenging to realize. Staffs’ rhetoric, competing views, and treatment of youth at NWD differentially contradict the organization’s mission and values. While some appeared to honor youth agency, voice, and choice, others engaged deficit-based language when discussing specific “cases” and family encounters. Some interventions mirrored a continuation of surveillance.

Author

• Larry D. Brown, University of Wisconsin