Posted by Jay Livingston
Seventeen Montclair State sociology students were inducted into ΑΚΔ last night. They are
Viviana Bertaggia Michael Fichter Jessica Gomez Rebecca Helfer Kyle Hoekstra Richard Imparato Elizabeth James Nicole Joseph Anthony Marrone | Joseph Molitoris Nicholas Pampaloni Heather Posternock Brittney Price Jadqueline Price William Parker Reynolds Tamara Suvil Andrea Swinson |
Our speaker was Jamie Fader of SUNY Albany, shown here with Faye Allard (they were students together at Penn).
For the past several years, Jamie has been following fifteen inner-city kids from Philadelphia who had been sent to a privately run rural lock-up for juveniles a five-hour drive from home. These were kids the court deems as “serious” in terms of either risk or needs. Jame hung with these kids during and after their incarceration, and she is especially interested in how they fare after release. The short answer is: not so good.
These kids’ lives are something out of the “The Wire.” Many had childhoods devoid of experiences that most of us take for granted. The drug trade is pervasive; most of them were sent away for drug offenses – even possession. When they return, the year or so of coercive “therapy,” based on long discarded psychological ideas about criminals, is usually of minimal help, despite the $80,000 a year price tag. It takes incredible strength to wall yourself off from the pressures of the environment – social, physical, and economic. They get back to the ’hood, they need money, and drug dealing is something they know how to do.
But while Jamie’s talk may not have been so hopeful about juvenile justice, it was inspiring as an example of ethnographic sociology.
(Here are a couple of other pictures from the evening. It’s obvious that the Socioblog needs a better, or at least more persistent, photographer.)
Yasemin, Sangeeta, Janet
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