Barriers, Blinders, and Unbeknownst Experts

Abstract

This article details the various access barriers negotiated by the author in conducting qualitative interviews with young women in a county-level juvenile justice system. After discussing how these obstacles shaped and delayed this particular project, the importance of qualitative research for understanding the more nuanced facets and consequences of juvenile justice is demonstrated by analyzing one young woman’s reflections on how youth justice shaped her life. Reflecting on the insights of this “unbeknownst expert,” it is argued that one of the clearest windows into the larger social forces that condition whether or not a program or set of policies “works”—the words of young people—remains covered, in large part because of the access barriers analyzed here. The importance of creating an alternative to such a partial criminology of juvenile justice is discussed.