“I am in School!”: African American Male Youth in a Prison/College Hybrid Figured World

Abstract

Educational programs are seen as a vehicle for improving the educational experiences and life outcomes for youthful offenders. In 1998 North Carolina started the Workplace and Community Transition Youth Offender Program (YOP). The program offers youth post-secondary educational courses. Our study examines 2007-2009 data from YOP youth participating in the program. Using students' voices our study shows that YOP not only decreases recidivism drastically, but has a personal impact in the youth participants' lives. YOP provides a space of change that is not prison or a traditional college. The hybrid figured world provides an opportunity for African American male youth to re/author themselves creating new hybrid identities. The youth author themselves as students versus inmates. These new identities and educational competencies have potentially long term benefits for youth offenders and for communities. and in relation to the social types that populate these figured worlds and in social relationships with the people who perform these worlds. People can also develop new identities in figured worlds in dialogic relationship to how they are positioned and as a result of how they choose to author themselves.This article presents data collected between 2007 and 2009, on how African American male youth offenders in North Carolina youth correctional facilities negotiated different identities through participation in a college education program for youth offenders. This article will highlight that despite the limits on time, space, speech, and control of inmates' bodies (Foucault 1979), the youth offender college education program created an alternative, competing, and ultimately hybrid figured world where the African American youth in this study were re/positioned as college students rather than inmates, and then authored themselves in new agentive ways. This study demonstrates the resiliency of incarcerated African American youth and the positive impact of youth offender college education programs, despite the institutional limitations imposed on them in prisons (Goffman 1961). North Carolina PrisonsThe United States Department of Corrections reported that the correctional population between 2007 and 2009 averaged approximately 7,256,000 offenders, including adults on probation, parole, and those incarcerated in state or federal prisons and in local jails (Glaze 2010). As of December 2007, there were 78 prisons in North Carolina. The prison inmates totaled 38,241 with 93% (35,584) being male and 7% (2,657) being female. The racial makeup of the total inmate population was 58% (22,049) African American, 35% (13,367) White, and 7% (2,825) Other. The age classification was 94-95% (36,390) adult, 5% (1,720) youth 18-20, and less than 1% (131) youth under 18 (http://randp.doc.state.nc.us/pubdocs/0007054.PDF). By 2009, there were 71 prisons in North Carolina. Prison inmates totaled 40,133 with 93% (37,296) being male and 7% (2,837) being female. The racial demographic of the inmate population was: 57% (22,918) African American,...

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“…Individuals “figure” who they are through the activities and in relation to the social types that populate their figured world and in social relationships with people who perform these worlds. The importance of figured worlds is also the foundation for other contexts for the production of identities: positionality, space of authoring, and making worlds (Holland et al, 1998; Urrieta, Martin, & Robinson, 2011). ZTPs figure the world of school to be exclusionary and prohibiting toward Black girls, based on these girls’ perceived nonconformity to heteronormative constructions of femininity as White and middle classed.…”

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“…We call for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to consider how schools might operate using disciplinary procedures that (re)position Black girls as scholars, fully human, and as individuals who have the right to perform their femininity in ways that are self-fulfilling and will not be demonized. Furthermore, the rejection of dehumanizing disciplinary policies can allow Black girls and other girls of color to "make worlds" in which they author themselves in new agentive ways (Urrieta et al, 2011).…”

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