Temporal Experiences of Confinement: Exploring Young People’s Experiences in Danish Secure Institutions

Abstract

This article explores temporality in young peoples’ narratives of confinement on welfare grounds in Danish secure institutions. The analysis draws on data from two qualitative studies on young people’s experiences of confinement. Drawing on Michael Flaherty’s conceptualization of ‘making time’ (Flaherty, M. G., 2002, Symbolic Interaction, 25, 3, 379–388), we explore the unsteady passing of time, the agentic practices of manipulating and obliterating time and how bureaucratic power is exercised by depriving young people control of their time and subjecting them to slow or even ‘dead’ time in isolation or waiting for release. While secure institutions are closed institutions, this article explores the permeability of closed institutions by looking at temporality as a dimension that links the inside and outside while also contributing to create specific experiences of temporal and spatial divisions. This perspective on young people’s temporal experiences contributes empirically to scholarship on the confinement of young people and it has practical implications for the service provision for troubled and troublesome young people.

Introduction

Time is a key dimension of confinement. Not just the length of doing time, but the social construction of time while incarcerated. Time in confinement can be accounted for in other ways than as minutes, hours and days passing in a linear and clock-structured time. Custodial time is also experienced and ascribed meaning in confinement, such as the painful experience of ‘time standing still but passing away’ (Wahidin, 2006, para 6.4). ‘Doing time’ is often described as a period of waiting, feeling stuck or caged, forced to endure empty time, and prisoners respond in different ways to the monotony of institutional life by engaging in activities to mould, manipulate or obliterate time inside (Armstrong, 2018; Scarce, 2002). Rik Scarce, who was detained for refusing to reveal confidential research data, argued that for prisoners ‘time is constructed for survival’ (2002, p. 306). Thus, time may not just be a dimension of the carceral experience, but a key facet of it. In this article, we explore time as a constitutive dimension of social reality in Danish secure institutions; the unsteady passing of time, the agentic practices of making time pickup pace or disappear and the exercise of bureaucratic power subjecting youth to slow or even ‘dead time’ (Wahidin, 2006) in isolation or waiting for a date of release.

This article draws on two qualitative studies in Danish secure institutions conducted in 2015 by the first author and in 2018 by both authors. In both studies, time, timing and temporal rhythm appeared as significant dimensions of how young people narrated their experiences of confinement. While temporality has been studied, and theorized within prison research (Armstrong, 2018; Chamberlen, 2018; Cope, 2003; Foucault, 1979; Scarce, 2002; Wahidin, 2006), this is less the case in studies on youth in confinement. Some studies touch upon time and temporal experiences, such as a study of boredom and lack of meaningful activities in secure institutions (Bengtsson, 2012b), a study highlighting the pains of indeterminate placement in protective care (Vogel, 2018), and studies of how youth comply with rules and institutional expectations to reduce their time in confinement (Cox, 2011; Enell, 2017). All these studies focus on time and temporality inside, while this study explores temporality as a dimension of confinement that extends beyond the closed perimeter of the institutions, linking inside and outside temporalities and creating specific experiences of temporal and spatial continuities and divisions. While most of the young people in Danish secure institutions are confined on grounds of offending, this article includes data related only to young people confined on welfare grounds. We draw on Michael Flaherty’s conceptualization of ‘making time’ (2002), arguing that temporal experience is embedded within institutional time and in the timing of interventions planned by case managers. This spatio-temporal analysis contributes empirically to scholarship on the confinement of youth and has practical implications for the service provision for troubled and troublesome young people.

Conceptualizing Time and Confinement

UN Convention of the Child emphasizes that confinement of children should be as lenient as possible and without contact to adult prisoners. Thus, children and young people are generally confined for shorter periods of time and in institutions that often serve multiple purposes in a blurred space between criminal justice and child protection services (Henriksen & Prieur, 2019). They are rarely referred to as prisons, but are rather framed by a euphemistic language where incapacitation and punishment are guised as protection and care, evident in referring to ‘intensive care units’ (isolation cells), ‘secure institutions’, ‘secure training centres’, ‘protective care’, ‘locked residential care’ or ‘reform schools’. Children’s locked institutions are diverse, and the studies are largely empirical explorations of everyday practices (Inderbitzin, 2005; O’Neill, 2001; Wästerfors, 2011), treatment and the use of cognitive programmes (Cox, 2011; Franzén, 2015; Goodkind, 2009; Rose, 2014) and the production of troubled identities (Bengtsson, 2012a; Henriksen, 2017a; Roesch-Marsh, 2014; Vogel, 2018). While time, timing and temporal experience is touched upon in these studies, it has not been thoroughly analysed or theorized. The studies also largely focus on practices and experiences inside, while linkages to outside lives, relations and temporality have received less attention. Very few studies are longitudinal and further attention is needed to understand the institutional trajectories of young people who end up in confinement, where safeguarding and incapacitation takes priority over young people’s wider needs of support and treatment (Myers, 2013).

Time has been more explicitly explored is prison research. Prison sentences are defined by their length and release dates, and confinement involves some degree of accommodating inmates into a penal temporal structure (Cope, 2003; Foucault, 1979; Matthews, 1999; Wahidin, 2006). Prisons have a specific spatio-temporal rhythm where meals, activities and movement on the inside are structured in predefined and often rigid and punctual schedules designating a certain timing, function and use of spaces (Armstrong, 2018). As argued by Scarce, ‘Time, it seems, is out of the inmate’s hands’, which implies a loss of power and self-determination as an agentic subject, thus prisoner’s attempts to engage actively with time inside links to regaining a sense of self (Scarce, 2002, p. 306). Temporal uncertainty, endured particularly by prisoners in remand or with indefinite sentences, is known to produce immense strain and frustration (Crewe, 2011; Smith, 2012). Many of these temporal dynamics have been observed in other closed institutions such as refugee centres or closed psychiatric wards, where uncertainty and time spent waiting for authorities to adjudicate your case can be an affective experience associated with pain, frustration and a general lack of respect and dignity (Turnbull, 2016). Studies also draw attention to how prisoners cope with an awareness of life progressing and passing outside, even strategizing to create temporalities that obliterate the passing of time (Chamberlen, 2018; Scarce, 2002). Thus, exploring custodial settings as having an inner temporal world closed off from the outside may provide inadequate understanding of custodial experiences. Just as the metaphor of the cell ‘obscures the extent to which imprisonment involves constant circulation, porous borders and unruly time’ (Armstrong, 2018, p. 134), we suggest that the metaphor of the ‘total institution’ (Goffman, 1961) obscures the linkages between the inside and outside, and how both imaginaries mutually constitute each other.

Theorizing Time as Lived Experience

We draw on a phenomenologically inspired understanding of time as a subjective experience, while situating human perception of time within ‘real’ or ‘non-human’ time (Hodges, 2008), which we refer to as clock-time. We apply this distinction to explore young people’s temporal experience of confinement, as a mutually constitutive process between clock-time passing at a linear, steady pace and a subjective experience of time that passes at an irregular rhythm, which can be altered by active engagement. We draw on the theorization of Michael Flaherty (2002) of making time, as ‘agentic practices that involve attempts to control, manipulate, or customize one’s own temporality or that of others’ (Flaherty, 2002, p. 379). Flaherty presented a model of four temporal modalities to account for agency in the temporal experience. The first modality is classic determinism, where temporality is determined by outside causes and where the subject can do little to change the temporal effect. The other three modalities include some degree of agentic practice. First, cultural reproduction refers to agentic practices largely following a cultural script for meaningful ways of making time. Second, reactionary agency refers to ways of resisting the temporal determinism inherent in the situation. Third, time play relates to satisfying individual desires for temporal experience mostly related to a sensory or emotional state of mind. We use this conceptual framework to explore how temporality in confinement is the product of active engagements by the young people with the constraints, possibilities and outside bureaucratic processes that shape and condition their time in a secure institution.

Secure Institutions

Similar to other Nordic countries, the Danish welfare state is known for expansive welfare provision for children and families. The number of children in out-of-home care has been constant during the past decades amounting to approximately 14,000 or 1 per cent of all children under the age of 18 (Lausten & Jørgensen, 2017). The large majority are placed in foster care due to a general precaution to place children in residential care. Within the landscape of out-of-home care, secure institutions are exceptional first and foremost by being locked but also by their use of other restrictive measures such as physical coercion, isolation and body search in compliance with Law on Adult Responsibility for Children and Youth in Out-of-home Care. ¹ There are eight secure institutions with a current capacity of 106 places, and every year approximately 600 young people enter secure placement with an average length of stay of 64 days (Danske Regioner, 2019). This reflects an underlying idea that confinement should be a last measure and as lenient as possible following the Convention of the Child. The institutions are well staffed, with internal school and gym facilities, the units are small (4–5 persons) and there is generally a homey feeling in the well-kept units where all the young people have private rooms. Everyday life is structured around meals, school, chores and leisure activities that are planned in a detailed timely and spatial structure.

The young people are placed here on legal and welfare grounds; however with 75 per cent in surrogate pre-trial remand or serving a sentence, the institutions mainly serve as surrogate custody for young offenders. Approximately 25 per cent are placed in secure institutions on welfare grounds due to concerns about their conduct and development (drug abuse, absconding, criminal involvement and danger to themselves or others) and an assessment that more lenient forms of placement will not serve the purpose of safe guarding/assessing the child. These placements require approval by a Municipal Children and Youth Board, based on a recommendation made by the case manager assigned to the young person. Placements on welfare grounds have a maximum length of 3 months (illegible for extension by 3 months), and during their stay most of the young people do not know when their stay terminates. The young people are placed in units together irrespective of the grounds of placement, and with similar restrictions in terms of access to phone and internet and visits, and they rarely leave the institutions during their stay.

Data Production

This article draws on two qualitative studies on secure placement. The first study, conducted in 2015–2017 by the first author, was an ethnographic study of gendered practices and experiences in secure institutions. The study included multi-sited fieldwork in 10 units in 4 secure institutions, and interviews with 25 young people (12 girls/13 boys) and 20 staff (male/female). Twelve of the young people, nine girls and three boys, were placed on welfare grounds, and the analysis primarily draws on the data from these young people to make it compatible with the second study, where all the participants are placed on welfare grounds. The study was explorative touching upon issues such as young people’s gendered experiences of social life in the unit, confinement and restrictive measures, their views on treatment and pedagogic practices and their aspirations for the future. The aggregate data consisting of 45 interviews and 250 pages of field notes were coded thematically in Nvivo, which provided insight and oversight over a detailed and in-depth data set on the social life, practices and rationalities of secure institutions. Time was not an explicit focus of the study, but rather emerged as a theme in the narratives of secure placement. This article draws particularly on the data segments coded as ‘time’, ‘case worker’ and ‘life outside’. This analysis extends on previous publications analysing the gendered practices and experience of confinement (Henriksen, 2017a, b).

The second study was conducted in 2018 by both authors exploring decision-making processes related to placement in secure institutions on welfare grounds. The data for this study consist of 9 ‘ongoing’ cases and 21 terminated cases. The ongoing cases include interviews with youth placed in secure units, their case manager and case file data. The terminated cases include only case file data on youths who have been placed in secure care on welfare grounds in 2018, which provides insight into trajectories in and out of secure institutions and wider patterns in decision-making processes and rationalities. The study focuses on how case managers assess the need for secure placement and evaluate the outcome of such placements, and how young people make sense of their placement and experience being included in the decision-making processes particularly related to the interventions following secure placement. The case file data has been coded manually and the interviews have been coded thematically in Nvivo to provide the basis for theoretically informed analysis and further manual coding. The coding schema of study 2 was developed to make it compatible with study 1, particularly in relation to exploring temporality in their narratives of life outside, inside the institutions and in relation to their interactions with case managers.

Analysis

The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part explores young people’s temporal experiences of arrival, adjustment and resistance to the temporal rhythms of the secure institutions. The second part explores the links between temporal experiences inside and decision-making processes and bureaucratic temporality on the outside. In both parts, we explore perceptions of time, temporality and timing paying attention to the blurred boundaries between the inside and outside.

Part One: Making Time Inside

Arriving at a secure institution is an overwhelming experience for all the young people who participated in the studies. None of them had been involved in planning their placement and the large majority were not informed about their placement until a few hours before being taken to the institution, as expressed by Anna, when asked to describe her arrival (study 1),

I was just told that I was going to a secure institution and then I was taken there. I came here and I thought ‘this is really bad’, because it was dark and I couldn’t really see anything, I could just see the fence and stuff. I mean, you are locked up and you have to pass through three doors and stuff.

The narratives about arrivals include specific references to the penal materiality of secure institutions such as fences, bars in front of windows, safety measures and a general sense that this resembles prison rather than the forms of residential care the young people have previously experienced. They often struggle to recall temporal details of their first days, while the emotional experience of being confined dominates their narratives, such as being angry, feeling vulnerable and ‘just left all alone’ as expressed by a young girl. They have very limited access to phone and internet, and some express an acute awareness of being disconnected spatially and relationally, and having only oneself to rely on, as expressed by Thomas in the context of explaining his experience of arrival:

I actually think you realize how to get through it when the door is locked for the very first time, then it’s like, now there is no one, your mum is not here, your dad is not here, like there is no one. (A)t that point, I got to do a lot of thinking, and it went through my head, what have I done and why do I have to be in a place like this. I remember looking at my window and the bars in front of it (a long sigh) and then I learnt how to deal with the whole situation of being here, thinking things through, and … what could be worse? (Thomas, Study 2)

The quote conveys the emotional experience of disconnection, while the situation also calls for an agentic subjectivity, where the vulnerability of being alone is recast as a reflexive engagement with the situation, as Thomas learns to ‘deal with the whole situation of being here’. It appears that most of the young people go through a similar process where feelings of sadness, anger and frustration are replaced by more pragmatic approaches to dealing with secure placement.

Confinement implies ruptures in the young people’s social relations and a radical change in their everyday lives and temporal rhythms. Most of the young people have previously been placed in out-of-home care, but with less or none of the restrictive measures that secure institutions apply. The absence of cell phones is a topic, which many of the young people comment on. Cell phones are a vital means of communication and connectivity across time/space, which the young people are deprived of. Cell phones also provide an opportunity for actively engaging with passive or slow time, as expressed by Betty: ‘You know, you can’t just sit with your phone or something’. The young people are accustomed to ‘sit with their phones’ as a primary way of making time, and being deprived of this tool for making time significantly changes their everyday temporal experiences and strategies.

As in other custodial settings, secure placement implies a new experience of spatial and temporal division, where days are regulated and divided by clock-time in a way that the young people are not accustomed to. Many of the young people have absconded from home or out-of-home placement for weeks at a time, with none or irregular school attendance and involvement in various forms of ‘street life’ with offending and drug use (see also Cope, 2003; Henriksen, 2016). This life is characterized by abundant unstructured time, which the young people have made use of in their own routinized ways (see Järvinen & Ravn, 2017). Many of the young people juxtapose this ‘street life’ to what they refer to as ‘normal life’, which is a structured everyday life with school, and regular meals and sleep. While secure institutions do not constitute normality in the perception of the young people, the daily structure resembles what they connote and to some extent aspire as ‘normal everyday life’. The institutions follow a regular temporal structure regarding sleep, school, chores, physical activity, meals and time alone. In every unit, large billboards visualize the structure of the day displaying who does what with who, when and where. While all the young people expressed resistance towards being confined, they also expressed some appreciation of being in a structured, safe and predictable setting, as expressed by Oscar when asked to highlight some positive aspects of secure placement (study 2),

It’s not as unpredictable or how to put it. It’s quite nice, I think, this tight structure. And you are safe here, no doubt about that. But it also means something to be locked up in this way. Being confined. It’s by far the worst thing I’ve ever tried, especially because it has lasted for so long, like now I know that I have to be in here for 9 months and then I get to leave.

The ambivalence in the quote is evident and reflects a wider pattern in the two studies regarding the way many of the young people speak about secure placement. Confinement and the restrictive measures are experienced as punitive, while life on the inside can also benefit them, getting off drugs, getting regular and healthy meals and finding peace in structured everyday routines.

Engaging with Institutional Time

While the temporal structure in secure institutions is rigid and punctual, time is not experienced as flowing at a steady, linear pace, as Simon (study 2) expresses in this quote, where he explains about the daily structure and the various activities:

I: So would you say that time goes by quickly or slowly?

Time is slow at first and there are times when time is slow again, like when you find out that you are leaving soon and when you arrive, then time is slow. But when you find out how to stay occupied, time goes quickly. Like on weekdays, it’s not a problem, because we have those workshops and school and we get to go outside the unit, still within the fence, but kind of outside, not in the unit 24/7. But weekends are hard because school and workshops are closed, so they are kind of slow.

Time passes at different tempi depending on a range of factors (time of the week/day, activities available, staff resources), but it can also be altered by active engagement. Thus, finding out how to stay occupied is essential for making time pass in confinement. It requires an agentic practice of ‘making time’ (Flaherty, 2002) to manage one’s temporality, which is different to how the young people ‘make time’ on the outside. Inside, staying occupied implies following the temporal institutional structure and designated activities, hence ‘making time’ is first and foremost about ‘cultural reproduction’ (Flaherty, 2002) or mimicry of a ‘normal’ everyday temporality.

Confinement gets repetitive and boring as the weeks and months pass by in the same closed environment with limited activities (Bengtsson, 2012b). Thus, staying occupied can be a challenge particularly after some months in a secure unit. Boredom and the feeling that time has almost come to a complete stop cause great frustration for some, resulting in conflicts and trouble making. This is expressed by Dennis (study 2), in response to being asked whether he had experienced staff using coercive measures:

Not so much this time. I have not been here for so long this time. But at the end you just start tripping wanting to get out. So right now I actually like being here, I don’t mind. If I could just have my phone, I would be happy.

Confinement seems to impact the young people over time by compiling frustrations and increasing the risk of conflicts. We may also understand ‘tripping’ as an example of ‘reactionary agency’ (Flaherty, 2002) which serves to resist and disturb the rigid temporal monotony and rhythm of time inside. Similar to other forms of edgework and risk behaviour that often serve to replace boredom (Järvinen & Ravn, 2017; Lyng, 2004), ‘tripping’ is a strategy to make time pickup pace which is particularly urgent towards release, where time tends to slow down (Matthews, 1999; Wahidin, 2006).

Time is a key dimension of the disciplinary apparatus, controlling who does what and when, just as time becomes the subject of resistance and ways of claiming autonomy over custodial time. The young people apply a range of strategies to claim autonomy over time, for example being slow at doing chores or putting on shoes, or insisting on waiting even a few minutes for time to be right according to the schedule. Other common strategies are refusing to participate in daily activities, or doing the so-called ‘bed strikes’, where an entire unit refuses to go to bed. These are all examples of ‘reactionary agency’ (Flaherty, 2002) aimed at disturbing the temporal determinism inherent in the situation. These practices resonate with prison studies finding that inmates actively resist the synchronized time and movement in prison by, for example, undressing slowly in relation to a body search (Laursen & Laws, 2016), avoiding to shower at certain times or sleeping in the day and staying awake at night to experience the prison all quiet (Wahidin, 2006).

Ultimately the staff have an upper hand in the ability to control the temporal experience of confinement. The staff can reinforce the temporal determinism by adhering to clock-time, as observed in this situation:

One of the boys gets up to leave the table but is told to sit again by a staff. The time is 12:34 and lunch finishes at 12:35. We sit and watch the visor pass a complete circle before everyone gets up. The staff comments, ‘we need to get strict on those times’. (Field notes, study 1)

Adhering to clock-time and keeping the young people waiting is an effective exercise of power and control. Another form is by invoking sanctions that impose slow and even dead time on the young people. The most common sanction in secure institutions is sectioning, which implies spending time in your room, sometimes without the TV signal and largely deprived of means to make time pass, because there is little to do. Sanctions can also relate to being deprived access to shared activities or cancelling activities as a collective sanction, which results in time slowing down. As argued by Wahidin (2006) time is used to enhance punishment, keeping prisoners waiting, keeping them from engaging in training/activity and ultimately extending their time in confinement. Thus, if the young people do not engage in the spatio-temporal activities proscribed by the institutional order, the staff can subject them to slow or dead time, and the case manager can assess that an extension is needed, when the young people have limited possibilities for altering or resisting.

Getting Out of Sync

While the young people strategize to make time by engaging in activities and following a schedule for school, meals, leisure and sleep, they also express that extended time in secure care is wasted time, which results in falling behind in school and outside of peer groups. All the institutions offer primary education to the young people who have not passed the final exam, but the offers are limited especially for those who are past the ninth grade. The young people also fall behind in relation to other age-specific experiences and practices such as increased mobility and independency, decisions about future education and employment, intimate relationships and peer group interaction. In a study of young cannabis-users, this is referred to as getting ‘out of sync’ (Järvinen & Ravn, 2017). The longer they are confined, the more they speak about ‘wasting time’, ‘used time’ and even ‘stolen time’, as expressed in these quotes:

So jah, that just stole two years from my life, if you can put it that way (Mohamed, study 1)

I have come to realize a lot of things for sure and this (secure care), this I can’t do much longer. It’s like, it gets to you, like gets inside your head, this thing about being locked up in this way. Six months now and six months before. It’s a year in total. That is a long time to be locked up when you are only 15 years old. I have used a year of my life on being in a place like this, where I haven’t seen anything else. At all. (Oscar, study 2)

Being locked up implies staying inside for the duration of the placement with very few visits outside, hence when Oscar states that he has not ‘seen anything else. At all’, this is very literally the case. The institutions usually also have restrictions on who the young people can call, a ban on cell phones and limitations on accessing social media during their short internet access. Thus, the young people are disconnected from, yet also acutely aware of, the social life and temporal rhythm of the outside. Some fear losing friends as Betty (study 2) explains,

No, it’s just three months, but you know it’s still kind of being away from your friends for three months, that can be really hard on a friendship, like not seeing each other for that long, you kind of forget each other. Like with my friend Sara, it’s a bit hard, because she went to boarding school and she meets all these new people, and I can’t be there.

Betty acknowledges that ‘it’s just three months’ while also expressing a concern that friendships can dissolve within this time span, which implies that confinement can result in a form of ‘social death’ (see also Wahidin, 2006). The young people are constantly aware of an outside temporal rhythm evident when they watch television, at staff shifts and when they have visitors. Some of them expressed feeling awkward and uncomfortable when having visits, as Betty explained in relation to visits from her friend:

Also with my other friend Joy, you know, it was a bit strange. I don’t really like getting visits here, because I don’t have much to say, and then we just sit here and look at each other. (A)nd then also, when Joy was here, she went straight to a party, so for me that was like annoying.

Betty generally dislikes having visits and often cancels them, also from her father, because, ‘it’s so boring in here, we just sit in here and stare at each other’. The visitation room is the same room as we conduct the interview in, a small room in grey/white colours with a dining table and six chairs, a large window with bars and a view towards the fence. The materiality of the room is not accommodating for the sense of cosiness, warmth or comfort that young people reuniting with friends or families might need or aspire in visits. Thus, the conditions and restrictions on visits may be one reason to reject visits, while it may also be a way of suspending the outside world to survive prison time (Cope, 2003; Scarce, 2002), because visits remind the young people of temporalities outside, where their friends go to parties, celebrate holidays or go on vacation.

This first section of the analysis has focused on the young people’s temporal experience of arriving at secure institutions, accommodating to the institutional rhythm and making time inside by engaging in activities, while also struggling to make use of time and finding ways to resist and subvert the monotony of institutional time. The next section focuses on the young people’s temporal experiences and negotiations in relation to bureaucratic time and the decision-making processes related to their secure placement and planning their departure.

Part Two: Engaging with Bureaucratic Time

Professionals generally speak about secure placement as a ‘time out’ or ‘a break’ and consider it a short placement. None of the case managers we interviewed in study 2 liked the idea of confining minors; however they found it necessary to safeguard the young person. Since it is required to exhaust other interventions before secure placement, it is not surprising that most of the young people come from other forms of out-of-home placement. It was however surprising that about half of the placements in both studies started as emergency placements due to either a longer period of absconding and the police finding the young person, or a specific violent event, causing either parents to call for help or (more commonly) the placement in out-of-home care to be terminated. This explains why the young people express not being informed about or included in the decision-making process resulting in secure placement. In such cases of emergency, a referral to secure care can be made within a few hours by the Chair of the Municipal Board of Children and Youth. This is how Simon (study 2) narrated his experience of the meeting at the board, which took place a week after his emergency placement:

I thought I was going to (name of secure institution) for a few days of peace and quiet (laughs), so it was a bit … when I went to the Board of Children and Youth and there were all these people in front of me and I like get to explain, they have my papers throughout the years, but I get to explain what happened and like the situation that night. These people then sit and write and after, I think 25 minutes, I was told to go out and then they talk to my mum and dad and my case manager alone for 10 minutes or so, and then they bring me back inside and I am told that my stay at (names a secure institution) will continue for three months for observation, pedagogical observation.

There is an explicit temporal theme in this narrative regarding the proceeding of the meeting and their decision. Simon thinks he is confined due to a specific violent event in a residential care setting, as he says: ‘I get to explain what happened and the situation that night’, albeit he recognizes that the board members have his ‘papers throughout the years’. He expects a few days in secure placement based on a single violent situation; however the emergency placement turns into 6 months of pedagogical observation based on his general behaviour and development. This discrepancy is evident in other narratives as well, where the young people explain being confined due to specific events of acting out, while their case files reveal wider concerns about risks such as absconding, abuse and offending over time as the grounds of placements. Simons’s narrative also conveys the temporal experience of a bureaucratic encounter, where minutes are used to indicate the length of time that he, his parents and his case manager speak, and a decision is made. His narrative highlights how the decision-making process looks from the perspective of a young person; a smooth and effective bureaucratic machinery that adjudicates his 6 months of confinement in less than 2 h.

Clashing with Bureaucratic Time

While the emergency placements appear to be quick and straightforward decisions from the perspective of the young people, our interviews with case managers and meticulous reading of case files left a different impression. These cases involve team collaboration, legal consultation and management authorization coordinated within a few chaotic hours. Secure placement, especially emergency placements, disturbs and destabilizes bureaucratic time conceptualized as linear with a rhythm and tempo planned according to legal requirements and available resources (Andersen & Bengtsson, 2019). Briefly, it seems that the ‘street life’ temporality of the young people intersects with bureaucratic temporality, forcing the latter to accommodate to the emergency of the situation. Some municipalities have teams designated to handle these complex cases; however, secure emergency placements disturb even this system geared for troubled and troublesome young people. This impacts the arrival and first few weeks of secure placement. The young people convey experiences of ‘suddenly being picked up’ sometimes by a case worker they do not know, or arriving without medication or personal items because their placement clashes with planned work schedules or holidays of their case manager.

This kind of case needs to go through your case manager, but she was on vacation, so someone else came, and I had nothing on me, like no identification and everything went so fast, so my case manager wasn’t told I was here, she only found out when she got back to work and we went to that meeting (Municipal Board of Children and Youth) (Simon, study 2)

Simon arrives at the secure institution ‘without anything’ and for the first 2 weeks he has no contact with his case manager because she is on holiday, which also means that the list of people he can call is not issued and he therefore has no contact with his family. Thus, temporal practices clash in the emergency placements; the extreme behaviour of the young people disturbs the organization and timing of administrative practices just as the bureaucratic temporality shapes the experience of entering secure care, when case managers are not available to issue phone lists, establish continuity and explain the grounds of placement.

Waiting Time

Secure placement for pedagogical observation or on grounds of danger is granted for a maximum of 3 months eligible for an extension of 3 months. In practice, case managers plan the secure placement to last for 3 months, to allow time for an observation period that can provide insights on the social, psychological or psychiatric difficulties of the young person, which is used to qualify placement or service provision after secure care. Case managers and professionals in secure institutions repeatedly stress that no child is confined longer than necessary, which is also in accordance with the Law on Adult Responsibility and the UN Convention of the Child. Case managers do, however, also admit that extensions are often the result of a failure to find or organize appropriate placement. This is also the impression conveyed by the young people, when asked if they knew their date of release:

I think so, but he (the case manager) said, ‘we will sort it out soon, but maybe we will need to extend you just a little bit’, so I don’t know. (Betty, study 2)

It was … I’m actually not sure. I think it was because they couldn’t find a place. Like they still struggled to find, figure out where to send me. So, difficulties in finding a place. (Thomas, study 1)

As we have shown in the first part of the analysis, the young people do not consider 3 months in confinement to be a short period, and the uncertainty of when their stay terminates is the cause of much frustration and anxiety about their present situation and immediate future. Similar findings are documented among adult prisoners, where uncertainty about custodial conditions or duration is considered a significant ‘pain of confinement’ (Crewe, 2011). Being stuck in a waiting position has been described as an experience associated with pain, frustration and a general lack of respect and dignity (Turnbull, 2016). As argued by Bourdieu (2000), waiting processes are also integral to the working of domination by installing and reinforcing hierarchies and power relations. Indefinite placements or waiting for adjudications regarding restrictive measures, assessments or decisions on future placements are examples of ‘classic determinism’ with limited possibilities for agentic making of time (Flaherty, 2002). The young people express frustration about being caught in a temporally determined space, with limited means to manipulate the monotony of custodial time.

Rather than passively waiting in confinement for bureaucratic time to pass and future placements to be arranged, the young people engaged with bureaucratic time by calling their case manager and by trying to positively influence the decision-making process through collaboration and good behaviour. This is expressed by two of the boys, when asked how they experience complying with rules and the tight temporal structure:

In a secure institution, it’s all about making sure … how to put it, if you take two steps forward and you have done well, then you need to make sure not to make a mistake, because then you go back again, and that has huge impact on your case (Steven, study 1)

It gets you through the day in a way, because if I do these things well, then maybe something good will happen, I will get out earlier, but it can also be difficult, if you don’t know what to do. I mean when I ask my case manager, he cannot tell me even though it’s three months to begin with, it could easily be extended another three months, I mean you don’t get to go out until they found a place for you. (Simon, study 2)

The notion that good behaviour impacts your case is an effective regulatory practice in secure care, even though, or maybe especially, when the young people do not know what is required of them to move on (Enell, 2017). This resonates with findings among prisoners who engage in treatment and behave well to improve their chances for early release or conditions in custody (Laursen & Laws, 2016). While the disciplinary effects are evident, it is also worth observing how indefinite time opens a space, where the young people attempt to shape and thus actively engage in regaining control or abbreviate ‘stolen time’, ‘wasted time’ and time spent away from relations and activities on the outside.

Some of the young people tried to calculate their length of stay, suggesting that their time in secure care should be proportional with the troubling behaviour that sent them in there, as expressed by Danny, when asked to assess how long he would be inside (study 2).

I guess, I have to be here like for half a year. Because it’s not a first offense and last time I was placed on the same grounds and I was here for five months, so I should be here for longer.

I: But it is not a punishment to be here?

No, you are not sentenced, but it’s a kind of punishment. You’ve kind of crossed the line and then they throw you in here. Ten years ago they would have called it Juvenile Prison.

Rather than trying to abbreviate indefinite time in confinement through good behaviour, Danny applies a punitive logic of calculating when his stay terminates, based on what is reasonable in relation to the gravity of ‘stepping over the line’. However, within this logic he also compares the length of his stay to those in custody, who serve shorter periods for more serious transgressions than his. He does not speak about strategizing to shorten his stay by good behaviour, but rather deals with his indefinite ‘sentence’ by making his own assessment of what to expect.

A Structured Life

The case managers generally express that the young people benefit from being in secure care, emphasizing getting off drugs, school attendance, regular sleep and meals and a clear structure, as expressed in this quote:

It is at (name of secure institution) that we experienced her being most calm. Those rules are not open for negotiation. That is at least what we experience, that she has been in a good development, physically she looks better, her eyes are clear, open … (case manager, study 2)

Case managers often observe improvements in the general well-being of the young people while they are in secure care, and they express concerns about maintaining this progress in an open residential setting. Thus, extensions often serve the purpose of consolidating the acquired skills or structured everyday life, to avoid relapse into crime, absconding and drug abuse when the young people leave the secure institution. Oscar (study 2) is trying to convince his case manager that ‘a very structured day’ will enable him to live with his mother after his second secure placement. He says:

And then I suggested, because my day here is very planned, a structure I follow every single day. So it could like continue in some way when I get home maybe with some support. Not that I think I cannot get structure in my life, but just like to get used to being outside.

Structure is a reoccurring theme in the narratives of the young people and the case managers. Secure institutions provide a structure that resembles a ‘normal day’; as phrased by the case manager of Betty (study 2), ‘just a normal structure, which all young people need, making it possible to get up and have a normal life and go to school’. Thus, internalizing the temporal structure acquired in secure institutions provides a way for the young people to synchronize their temporality with wider cultural imaginaries of a ‘normal everyday’. Being in sync with socially structured time implies being normal versus non-compliance suggesting laziness, being untrustworthy, inferior or immoral (Järvinen & Ravn, 2017). Thus, altering the temporal structure of the young people seems to be some marker of success, raising the hope that skills and progress will sustain from secure placement.

Conclusion

This article explores young people’s temporal experiences in secure institutions, finding that time is experienced as both unmanageable (in case of long or indefinite placements) and manageable through various active engagements and strategies. This study highlights how the institutional organization of time/space shapes and how young people experience time and actively engage in practices to manipulate or obliterate time. Accommodating to the temporal structure is also embedded in orientations towards bureaucratic time and decision-making related to release and future placements, which will enable the young people to get back ‘in sync’ with social relations and activities on the outside. The intimate link between power and temporal agency is also highlighted, especially how sanctions invoke slow or dead time. We argue that temporality is a key dimension of youth confinement and further empirical exploration and theorization could provide new insights on young people’s agency, treatment and trajectories into and out of confinement. The analysis suggests that treatment is not only about responsibilization and empowerment (Franzén, 2015; Goodkind, 2009), but also about internalizing a ‘normal’ temporal structure compliant with attending school and taking up employment. Temporality may be an important element of understanding trajectories into and out of confinement, as frustration, conflicts and even absconding, links to young people experiencing determined or unmanageable time.

Studying temporality has forefronted the permeability of closed institutions, which may reflect that the population of our study are confined for less than 6 months, thus recalling and orienting themselves towards outside relations and activities. Our findings may apply to a wider population of confined, such as in closed psychiatric wards and prisons in the Nordic countries, where sentences are generally short (Ugelvik & Dullum, 2012). However, it may be productive in relation to other prison-related topics to depart from imaginaries of the ‘total institution’ (Goffman, 1961) and further explore the blurred boundaries, exchanges and linkages between inside and outside. It may be particularly relevant in studies of young people in confinement, due to their more lenient or shorter confinement, and where interdisciplinary collaboration between criminal justice, child protection and mental health often applies.

Professionals often refer to secure placement as a ‘break’ or a ‘parenthesis’; however, the young people experience confinement for even a few months as lengthy and uncertainties about their release date cause great frustration. These insights are valuable for planning sustainable service provision for troubled young people. Interventions need to be organized and effectuated in compliance with the time spans that young people operate in and can manage. The timing and intensity of interventions is key to successful service provision for troubled young people (Andersen & Bentgsson, 2019), just as incorporating the temporality of the young people could make progress manageable and tenable over time.