Compassionate Confinement: A Year in the Life of Unit C

Received an Honorable Mention for the 2015 Society for Social Work and Research Outstanding Social Work Book Award

To date, knowledge of the everyday world of the juvenile correction institution has been extremely sparse. Compassionate Confinement brings to light the challenges and complexities inherent in the U.S. system of juvenile corrections. Building on over a year of field work at a boys' residential facility, Laura S. Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe provide a context for contemporary institutions and highlight some of the system's most troubling tensions.

This ethnographic text utilizes narratives, observations, and case examples to illustrate the strain between treatment and correctional paradigms and the mixed messages regarding gender identity and masculinity that the youths are expected to navigate. Within this context, the authors use the boys' stories to show various and unexpected pathways toward behavior change. While some residents clearly seized opportunities for self-transformation, others manipulated their way toward release, and faced substantial challenges when they returned home.

Compassionate Confinement concludes with recommendations for rehabilitating this notoriously troubled system in light of the experiences of its most vulnerable stakeholders.

Author: Laura S. Abrams, Ben Anderson-Nathe
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 02/01/2013
Pages: 188
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.62lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.43d
ISBN: 9780813554129

About the Author

LAURA S. ABRAMS is an associate professor of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and has written over forty scholarly articles and book chapters concerning youth identity, juvenile corrections, and reentry.

BEN ANDERSON-NATHE is an associate professor and program director of Child and Family Studies at Portland State University. He is the author of Youth Workers, Stuckness, and the Myth of Supercompetence and coeditor of Child & Youth Services.