BEYONG PRISONS: LIVED EXPERIENCES OF DESISTENCE AND REINTEGRATION AMONG YOUTH OFFENDERS

Abstract

Youth offender rehabilitation and reintegration are key goals of the Singapore criminal justice state. Existing studies concerning youth offenders have a largely psychological focus, and thus pay insufficient attention to structural factors. Instead, in formulating a theoretical framework that blends symbolic interactionism and a theory of capital, this thesis argues that the process of desistance (agency) needs to be understood in relation to (re)integration (structure). Through in-depth interviews with 10 males who were imprisoned as youths, this thesis examines how they navigate the post institutionalisation landscape with regard to desistance and (re)integration. It also aims to point out the residual impact of institutionalisation on this journey. The narratives suggest that agency is crucial in the origin and maintenance of desistance – through reflective identity shifts, perceiving hooks of change as personally relevant, managing negative emotions, knifing off past criminal networks, and navigating a stigmatised identity. That said, these agentic factors of desistance have to be understood with respect to one’s access to and accumulation of capital in a structural context. Those who faced challenges in maintaining desistance had gaps in conventional cultural and economic capital and remained in sticky anti-social networks – both often exacerbated by institutionalisation. Those who successfully desisted had accessed durable pro social capital in the form of both bonding and bridging social capital through which identity and relational desistance were achieved. Apart from these correctional obstacles upon release, youth offenders faced an additional task of negotiating an age related transitional stage characterised by transient events and developmental challenges.