Violence from Within the Reform School

• Author: Tarja Pösö,Leo Nyqvist,Päivi Honkatukia
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204006292663
• Date: 01 October 2006
• Published date: 01 October 2006
• Subject Matter: Articles

328

VIOLENCE FROM WITHIN

THE REFORM SCHOOL

Päivi Honkatukia

National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Helsinki

Leo Nyqvist

University of Turku

Tarja Pösö

University of Tampere

This article examines young people’s talk of violence to highlight the meanings of vio-

lence. Violence is approached as a fluid concept with multiple meanings. The empirical

data consist of 15 focus group interviews of young people (38 young people between 12

and 17 years of age) in two Finnish reform schools carried out by two interviewers in

each session. The interviews looked at the young residents’views on violence in general

and on the reform schools in particular. The analysis focuses on the narrative means that

the young people employed to describe violence: violence either as an instrumental

means or as a form of expression. The collective nature of violence was emphasized. The

results suggest that it is important to identify the multiple meanings assigned to violence

for the needs of social and criminal policy and of research.

Keywords: youth violence; residential institutions; focus groups; multiple meanings

of violence

The question of what violence signifies has become more problematic in postmod-

ern culture (Schinkel, 2004, p. 23). Partly, this is because violence is seen as an ever more

elusive concept. It refers to different forms of behavior and relationships with various con-

textual meanings, even though popular notions tend to represent it stereotypically as a uni-

versal phenomenon with an evil perpetrator and an innocent victim (Stanko, 2003, p. 4;

Stanko & Lee, 2003, p. 10). Besides acts causing serious physical harm, the concept of

violence refers to various everyday infringements of bodily and even mental integrity that

can be regarded as normal or even acceptable behavior. During the past decades, the

Western world has witnessed a tendency to broaden the scope of violence. Many of its pre-

viously hidden forms, such as violence against women and children, have become sources

of public discussion, disapproval, and criminalization, even if this development has also

been contested (Stanko, 2003, p. 12). Nowadays, if not also earlier, the concept of violence

is fluid and ambivalent.

In this article, we will analyze this fluidity in young people’s talk on violence. For

this purpose, we have interviewed young residents of reform schools in Finland, a small

northern European country. Reform schools are among the most specialized institutions of

Finnish child protection, and they are actually the only child protection institutions main-

tained by the state. They provide a placement for young people between 12 and 17 years

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice,Vol. 4 No. 4, October 2006 328-344

DOI: 10.1177/1541204006292663

© 2006 Sage Publications

of age who have difficulties in adapting themselves to the social norms expected of young

people. There are six of these institutions in Finland, and they hosted 292 young people in

2003. We interviewed young people who were living in two of these state-run institutions.

We will focus on the meanings of violence as based on our data, namely on the par-

ticular narrative means that the young people employed to describe violence: They articu-

lated violence either as an instrumental means for something or a form of expression. We

have named these narrative means as instrumental and expressive representation of violence.

We will begin by arguing why we have done this research in a particular societal and

physical context, namely in Finnish reform schools, before briefly exploring some of the

scientific discussions on instrumental and expressive violence. This will be followed by an

introduction to some methodological underpinnings in addition to our method, namely

focus group interviews in a residential setting. These sections provide the necessary basis

for the actual analysis of how the young people we interviewed used the instrumental and

expressive representation of violence while making sense of violence.

Why Youth Violence in the Finnish Residential Setting?

At first glance, Finland can be described as a rather peaceful welfare state in which

violence plays only a marginal role. A closer look reveals that the number of criminal

homicides in Finland is one of the highest in the Western world (LaFree & Drass, 2001).

A notable group of the victims are women who have been killed by their intimate partner.

Gendered violence, in particular, has long remained a hidden problem in Finland. Violence

against women had been discussed as a serious social problem only in the 1990s, a few

decades later than in Scandinavia and in Anglo-Saxon countries (Lahti, 2001; Nyqvist,

2001; Piispa, 2004).

Youth violence, in contrast, has raised public concern. However, each year there are

only a few homicides, unlawful killings, or murders by young people: Between 1996

to 2003 the number of such crimes has varied from 0 (1997) to 9 (2002; Lehti, 2002;

Marttunen & Kivivuori, 2003, pp. 146-157). The number is so small that in the World

Health Organization statistics on homicide rates among youths aged 10 to 29 years, the

rate for Finland in proportion to its population has not even been calculated (Krug,

Dahlberg, Mercy, Zwi, & Lozano, 2002, pp. 28-29). On the other hand, recent studies have

documented the polarization of the welfare and social problems of children and youths.

More and more young people are doing well at the same time that social problems, includ-

ing violence, seem to accumulate in certain sections of the population (Järventie & Sauli,

2001; Kuure, 2001).

From the viewpoint of adult society, youth is glorified as the symbolic period of

beauty and freedom, but it is also associated with plenty of worry and problems (Muncie,

2004, p. 3). Youth as a period is described by a certain semidependency:Young people are

not yet totally independent citizens, but, at the same time, they represent future generations

(Furlong & Cartmel, 1997, p. 41). The media, politicians, and authorities are therefore par-

ticularly interested in the problem behavior of young people, an interest that has labeled

all young people as a social category. The young have often been the cause of what is

called moral panic: Groups of people considered dangerous are labeled with negative

stereotypes that are often overdimensioned in comparison to the original infringement of

norms. Moral panics may justify a stricter control of the labeled group. The violent behav-

ior of young people is an often-repeated example (e.g., Muncie, 2004, pp. 5-7).

Honkatukia et al. / REFORM SCHOOL AND VIOLENCE 329