Youth between punishment and welfare
Talk by PhD fellow Lea Brinkgaard, University of Copenhagen.
In Denmark, young lawbreakers above the age of criminal responsibility (15+) have historically been processed through the criminal justice system, the social welfare system, or– most often – a combination of both. Yet, the interinstitutional dynamics shaping youth crime measures between these spheres have been limitedly explored and rarely historicized. Drawing on my PhD research, this presentation examines decisive developments in youth crime control in the Danish welfare state, focusing on youth as a borderline category situated within a distinct interinstitutional space between punishment and welfare.
Through archival and published sources, it traces how interactions between institutions, practices, and actors across criminal justice and social welfare spheres have translated into concrete, and at times burdensome, measures, such as the Youth Prison (1933–1973) and the Youth Contract (1991–). By bringing the sociology of punishment, welfare historiography, and youth history into dialogue, the presentation explores how Danish youth crime control has been shaped and reshaped through a mutually constitutive interplay between penal-welfare trajectories and historically contingent conceptions of youth.