A weak case for solitary confinement: Categorisation, collegiality and accountability arrangements in a special residential home

Abstract

This article is a single case analysis of trouble talk taking place between teachers and care workers at a Swedish special residential home for boys and young men (aged 12–20). The topic of the talk is a potentially unwarranted solitary detention of a student. Using sequential- and Membership Categorisation analyses, we examine the participants’ methods for talking about the event as institutionally problematic while avoiding to blame the teacher responsible for the disciplinary action. Specifically, we demonstrate how the grounds for the confinement were initially disputed by the care workers and how an extended negotiation with the teachers eventually lead to a jointly acceptable account of the event. This involved recasting the event as a real-life experience that should afford the student important opportunities for socialisation into the social and institutional orders which inform daily life at the residential home. More generally, the analysis demonstrates how presumed knowledge of social and institutional structures and practices is mobilised and negotiated – through ‘categorial ordering work’ (Hester & Eglin, 1997) – in the service of coming to terms with the complex accountability arrangements of the special residential home.