Breaking out: The institutionalized practices of youth prison guards and the inmates who set them free

Abstract

Drawing from a place-based educational study of a youth detention centre, this chapter offers a narrative analysis of interviews with former staff and residents to expose incivilities between staff that worked together. Unanticipated threads that tie into the study of workplace violence became sewn together as the site’s hierarchical layers and practices shine an unflattering light on various examples of micro/lateral aggressions and incivility between the institution’s staff. Narrative analysis points to the role of education as a way to de(colonize) institutions as guards and staff share memories of youth inmates who acted for them as models of conflict resolution. Extended from the detention centre’s narrative data is the consideration that hierarchical disruptions are key to making space for conflict resolution in such a place of enclosure.