Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice: Scaffolding as Structure

207 Pages·2022·11.479 MB·English

by  Avi Brisman

With Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and
Justice, Avi Brisman provides us an in-depth, close-up and invaluable look
at the raw material and initial insights that ethnographic accounts are built
upon. Weaving moments of self-reflection and biographical tidbits into raw
fieldnotes, this book lifts the veil on the research and idea-building process.
This rich, novel and highly readable contribution may help to catalyze the
next wave of qualitative studies of crime and justice—and it will be particu-
larly valuable and energizing to those heading out into the field for the first
time.
Randy Myers, University of Washington, Tacoma
The poet Walt Whitman wrote, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Fieldnotes
on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice is large, too, as
measured not by word count but by the multitude of intellectual endeavors it
contains. In it, Avi Brisman ruminates on crime and criminology, sustains an
engaged conversation with the young people and staff members he studies,
and constructs an innovative text that is both prequel and sequel to his existing
scholarship. Interwoven with all this are a backstage autoethnography of
the research process and a rich account of its day-to-day particulars—and
beyond that, a multitude of insights that escape the boundaries of conven-
tional criminological writing.
Jeff Ferrell, author of Drift: Illicit Mobility
and Uncertain Knowledge
Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s
Perceptions of Crime and Justice
This book is an ethnographic examination of the young people who serve
voluntarily as judges, advocates, and other court personnel at the Red Hook
Youth Court (RHYC) in Brooklyn, New York— a juvenile diversion program
designed to prevent the fo\rmal processing of juvenile offenders— usually
first- time offenders— for low- level offenses (such as fare evasion, truancy, and
vandalism) within the juvenile justice system.
Focusing on the nine- to- ten- week- long unpaid training program that the
young people undergo prior to becoming RHYC members, this book offers
a detailed description of young people’s experiences learning about crime,
delinquency, justice, and law. Combining moments of self- reflection and auto-
biographical elements into largely “uncooked” fieldnotes, the book seeks to
demonstrate the hegemonic operations of a court (the Red Hook Community
Justice Center (RHCJC)— a multi- jurisdictional problem- solving court and
community center where the RHYC is housed)—the processes in which
it secures belief in formal justice and the rule of law, ensures consent to be
governed, and reproduces existing social structures.
An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and
scholars of criminology, law, sociology, and youth justice, as well as to those
undertaking ethnographic research on young people, crime, and justice.
Avi Brisman is a professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky
University, USA, an adjunct professor in the School of Justice at Queensland
University of Technology, Australia, and an honorary professor at Newcastle
Law School at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
Routledge Studies in Crime, Security and Justice
Contemporary social scientific scholarship is being transformed by the
challenges associated with the changing nature of, and responses to, questions
of crime, security and justice across the globe. Traditional disciplinary bound-
aries in the social sciences are being disturbed and at times broken down by
the emerging scholarly analysis of both the increasing merging of issues of
‘crime’ and ‘security’ and the unsettling of traditional notions of justice,
rights and due process in an international political and cultural climate seem-
ingly saturated by, and obsessed with, fear, insecurity and risk. This series
showcases contemporary research studies, edited collections and works of
original intellectual synthesis that contribute to this new body of scholarship
both within the field of study of criminology and beyond to its connections
with debates in the social sciences more broadly.
Edited by
Adam Edwards, Cardiff University
Gordon Hughes, Cardiff University
Reece Walters, Queensland University of Technology
Policing and Politicising Organised Crime
Monique Mann
Policing Nightlife
Security, Transgression and Urban Order
Phillip Wadds
The Algorithmic Society
Technology, Power, and Knowledge
Edited by Marc Schuilenburg and Rik Peeters
Crime and Disorder in Community Context
Edited by Rebecca Wickes and Lorraine Mazerolle
Police Funding, Dark Money, and the Greedy Institution
Randy K. Lippert and Kevin Walby
Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice
Scaffolding as Structure
Avi Brisman
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-Crime-Security-and-Justice/book-series/RSCSJ
Fieldnotes on a Study of Young
People’s Perceptions of Crime
and Justice
Scaffolding as Structure
Avi Brisman
Frontispiece: Gregory Vershbow, Art in a Liminal Space: Columbus Circle (2012).
First published 2023
by Routledge
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© 2023 Avi Brisman
The right of Avi Brisman to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
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storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 55251- 7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-03-225718-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 14821- 2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/ 9781315148212
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
In memory of my mother’s memory …
… and for Laura, the love of my life

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking- glass;
I, that am rudely stamped, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them—
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun.
And descant on my own deformity
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well- spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams.
— William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, Scene 1, l.14– 33