The ART of apologizing: Entering the black box of an intervention program
AbstractDuring recent decades, evidence-based treatment programs have become a given part of the youth justice system. Typically, such programs are evaluated through quantitative effect studies, in which a variety of outcome measures play a significant role. This case study offers an alternative, interactional evaluation of a treatment program. More specifically, the analysis focuses on an Aggression Replacement Training (ART) session that was held at a youth detention home in Sweden. In this session, two trainers and three detained adolescent boys perform an exercise that serves to teach the latter various apology practices. A detailed, conversation analytic examination of the interaction in the session shows that the trainers repeatedly problematize the boys’ contributions in a kind of deviant-making enterprise. Thus, rather than recognizing competencies that do become visible through closer inspection, the trainers one-sidedly highlight lack and deficiency. It is argued that the interpretative frame of ART, with its focus on pathologization, individualization, and responsibilization, amplifies the incarcerated boys’ deviancy, hence symbolically locking them up in a second, non-material or discursive, sense.
