“Society Must be Protected from the Child”: The Construction of US Juvenile Detention as Necessary and Normal

摘要

Scholarship on televised representations of juvenile punishment is missing from the literature. By way of an ethnographic content analysis of forty US representations, the current work fills this void. Through three related themes, I argue that these representations paint the US system, one unmatched in either size or punitiveness, as a necessary and normal social institution. First, coverage depicts detained youth as worthy of incarceration through a focus on their supposed violent nature and rationality. Second, it normalizes the practice of juvenile incarceration by tacitly accepting harsh custodial tactics. Finally, by using detention centers as backdrops for comedy and drama, representations relegate juvenile justice to a position outside the political arena. This work serves as a reminder that in the age of mass incarceration, it is not only media moments that incite fear or spur panic that are of importance: those that normalize the peculiar policies of the United States may be just as consequential.