Empowerment in a Punitive Place: Violence Prevention Programs for Youth in a Culture of Control

• In Event: 180 - Regular Session. Deviance and Social Control

Abstract

This ethnographic study of in-school violence prevention programs in Los Angeles explores the tensions between empowering programs for at-risk youth and the punitive context which surrounds them. Programs often construct marginalized young people as pre-deviant and pre-violent and thus in need of specific forms of empowerment. Distinctly different from the a punitive form of social control, these programs are neoliberal - funded by foundation and government grants, run through nonprofits, and deploying a logic of individual risk and health. Four tensions are analyzed: between technical and contextual expertise; between a discourse of deviance and a discourse of health; between “acting” empowered and avoiding punitive policies; and avoiding personal disclosures while talking about intimate lives. As facilitators and youth navigate these tensions they produce a hidden curriculum of at-riskness.

Author

• Max A. Greenberg, University of Southern California