Juvenile delinquency in political interdiscourse: Interpretations of deviante in the context of a "punitive turn"

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Bernd Dollinger; Professor Dr. Henning Schmidt-Semisch
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 191671181

The treatment of juvenile delinquency is subject to constant change. Currently, the thesis of a 'punitive turn' is used as a reference for reconstructing this alteration, indicating a rising willingness to punish (punitivity) since the 1970s. However, as the broad scientific debate illustrates, one needs to differentiate between particular dimensions of punitivity: There is an interaction between professions/institutions, political policies as well as the mass media on certain levels, but one needs to carefully differentiate between them. The aim of the current project, "youth delinquency in the interdiscourse", is to analyze the interdiscourses of the youth welfare service and the police within the presentation of youth delinquency in the practical orientated periodicals of each profession. In the field of social work, especially, the findings indicate a distinct transformation; inter alia, this is evident in the increasing cooperation with judicial authorities, and the growing willingness of social work to relativize its stance on the socio-economic system, becoming less critical towards social institutions. In addition, further research on punitivity produced significant findings on institutional protagonists (mainly the department of public prosecution and juvenile court). Furthermore, discourses of mass media targeting juvenile delinquency have been studied adequately. However, a systematic analysis of (juridical-) political policies is still lacking, although these contributions are of high relevance for the professional and institutional processing of juvenile deviance. Against this background, the subsequent project, "juvenile delinquency in political interdiscourse", aims at examining the parliamentary debates from 1970 until 2009, utilizing once more the analysis of interdiscourse. This analysis focuses on the debates in the Bundestag (Federal Parliament), the Bundesrat (Council of Constituent States) as well as the four state parliaments of Bavaria, Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and Saxony-Anhalt. Parliamentary debates are addressed at the public and are of immediate relevance to both juridical and political reforms. Hence, they are of utmost importance for the handling of juvenile deviance. The future findings are then to be correlated with the already acquired results of the presentations of youth deviance put forward by each profession. Next to the investigation of political policies, the future project shall thereby clarify the cohesion of discourses to be found in the field of social work and policing with their specific political positioning.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants