Juvenile lifers in the midst of bureaucratic zones of contention

• In Event: Contemporary Review of Parole: What's the Latest?

Abstract

Bureaucratic zones of contesting a youth’s adolescence are not independent of one another. What the police do impacts not only how prosecutors present their charges, but also how parole boards years later will consider the offense and the age of the adolescent at time of offense. In other words, the contention part may not be immediate and be informally or formally stated. Formally upon appeal may the confession be contested, as a consequence of newly obtained information or recently enacted reforms. In this paper, I examine how both formally and informally what goes on in the interrogating room can lead to decision-making in the court room and then in a parole board hearing room, and then subsequently contested. I refer to the contestation part as a repertoire of contention as biographically produced in the narratives of a select group of juvenile lifers released on parole.

Author

• Simon Singer, Northeastern University