Artful Dodgers: The Role of Unreliable Narrators in the Production of Authorized Histories and Assessments of Young People in Conflict with the Law

ABSTRACT

This article argues that pre-sentence reports for youth courts are co-authored by at least two unreliable narrators: the defendant and the youth justice worker. The production of an objective professional assessment for sentencing purposes is therefore a convenient fiction in which key actors collude. Such reports do not only seek to provide narrative explanations of past actions, but also shape future sentencing decisions and other outcomes that can either be helpful or harmful to service users. Full case files, meanwhile, contain documents that reveal less orderly and more challenging narratives from the margins.

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Jonathan Evans

JONATHAN EVANS is a qualified social worker with experience of practice in youth justice and probation work. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Criminology, University of South Wales in the United Kingdom.