Abstract
Scholarship on legal consciousness-the ways people understand,
imagine, and
use the law, as well as their attitudes and feelings towards the
law and the judicial system
(specifically, law enforcement and courts)-has focused primarily on
the circumstances
and conditions under which adults turn to the law or choose not to.
Little, however, is
known about the legal lives of young people. This dissertation
explores dimensions of
the legal consciousness of youth (ages 14-18) involved in
voluntary, non-punitive after-
school programs at the Red Hook Community Justice Center (RHCJC)-a
problem-
solving court and community center located near the heart of the
economically
disadvantaged, predominantly African-American and Latino
neighborhood of Red Hook
in Brooklyn, N.Y. One such after-school program at the RHCJC is the
Red Hook Youth
Court (RHYC)-a juvenile diversion program designed to prevent the
formal processing
of juvenile offenders (usually first-time offenders) within the
juvenile justice system.
Teenagers interested in serving on the RHYC must complete a
training program and pass
a "bar exam" in order to become RHYC members, where they help
resolve actual cases
involving their peers (e.g., assault, fare evasion, truancy,
vandalism). Focusing on the
training for RHYC membership, I examine the ways in which RHYC
participants (both
trainees and members) are exposed to certain ideas about the
essence and operation of the
law and how their legal consciousness is transformed by the RHCJC
over the course of
their participation with the RHYC. Using Ewick and Silbey's (1998)
"before," "against,"
and "with" the law schemas, I endeavor to identify common features
of the legal
consciousness of RHYC trainees and members. I argue that RHYC
recruits and
interviewees exhibit varying degrees of " against the law"
legal consciousness, but that
over the course of training, these youths begin to come "
before the law." As RHYC
members, I assert that the youths are more " before the law"
than before (i.e., more
" before the law" than when they were trainees) and that
they become " before the law" by
becoming the law or by becoming legal players enacting the
law (but not engaging " with
the law" to serve their
own self-interests).
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF IMAGES
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 2: LEGAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A
GUIDE
CHAPTER 3: RED HOOK, THE RHCJC, AND YOUTH COURTS
Red Hook, Brooklyn
Red Hook Community Justice Center
Youth Courts
CHAPTER 4: RHYC RECRUITMENT AND GROUP
INTERVIEWS
Recruitment
Group Interviews
CHAPTER 5: RHYC TRAINING: AN
OVERVIEW
A Typical RHYC Training Schedule
CHAPTER 6: WEEK I: WHAT TO DO WHEN STOPPED
BY THE POLICE WORKSHOP
CHAPTER 7: WEEK I: WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO THE RED HOOK
YOUTH
COURT & UNDERSTANDING THE YOUTH COURT/RESTORATIVE
JUSTICE
CHAPTER 8: WEEK II: OFFENSES, CONSEQUENCES, AND
SANCTIONS
CHAPTER 9: WEEK II: UNDERSTANDING THE YOUTH
OFFENDER
About this Dissertation
Rights statement
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