Handling fear among staff: violence and emotion in secure units for adolescents

ABSTRACT

The Swedish National Board of Institutional Care (SiS) has reported a rise in violent incidents between staff and youth placed in secure units. This paper explores how secure unit staff narratively position themselves and youth when speaking about violence, and how staff describe the emotional impact violence has on them. The paper takes two theoretical starting points. First is the concept of emotional labour, including feeling rules, emphasizing that staff work with the emotions of others whilst also being expected to control their own. Second is the idea that the interaction among staff shapes various social representations and positionings. Five focus groups were conducted with staff (n = 27) who worked with both boys and girls at three different secure units in Sweden. The empirical data was first processed through narrative analysis and then by an interaction analysis. The results, presented as four excerpts within four themes, reveal collegial processes of narrative helping that steer group members to find emotional positions when talking about experienced violence, i.e., to find appropriate feeling rules. Furthermore, despite counter-narratives expressed by participants in the focus group, a representation of youth as violent persists. Finally, emotional labour seems to involve working with one’s own feelings and controlling the emotions of youth, not the opposite. The results suggest how important it is for staff to recognize youth from different templates and that violence can take various forms, and furthermore, that it is essential to make the emotion of fear visible in this context.

KEYWORDS:

• Secure units
• violence
• focus group
• emotional work
• staff

Introduction

Secure units for adolescents are emotional settings for various reasons (cf. Crawley 2004) and emotional rules underpin these institutions. Most research on secure units, however, focuses either on different treatment outcomes or takes a youth perspective (Andersson Vogel 2012). Research focusing on the staff perspective, in particular, staff accounts of violence and emotions, is scarce. This article focuses on daily work at secure units and highlights staff perception of violence and emotions.

Staff at secure units meet youth from various backgrounds with complex problems (Andersson Vogel 2012; Sallnäs 2009; Johansson 2007). Furthermore, precisely because they work in secure units, they encounter youth who have perpetrated and/or been victims of violence. This duality – the need for social protection and care – creates tension, which shapes diverse institutional representation that moulds the relationship between staff and youth (Levin 2017; Bengtsson 2012; Jakobsen 2010). Through this ambiguity, staff construct various representations and positions of themselves, their co-workers, the youth and their workplace, i.e., creating specific emotional cultures with feeling rules (cf. Aalborg 2016; Calheiros et al. 2015; Stokholm 2009). This inherent contradiction may thus have an emotional impact on staff that can produce tension within the staff group (cf. Degner et al. 2015).

Emotions are embedded in narratives and narratives can be windows into life in organizations (cf. Frost et al. 2000). Staff narratives provide openings into the institutions where they work, enabling us to be more attuned to the institution as the site of a variety of emotions, feeling rules and cultures (cf. Aalborg 2016; Monrad 2016). Thus, using a narrative lens makes it possible to view staff as involved in an emotional culture where staff follow certain feeling rules (Hoschschild 1983).

Violence is a slippery, emotion-laden concept (Överlien 2015). In a secure unit, the perception of violence is based on the relationship between staff and youth: a relationship characterized by a power imbalance. In his study of quarrels at secure units, Wästerfors (2009) stresses these actions as an ongoing social process wherein the tension between the actual situation and the categorization of the violent behaviour provides a definitional frame of the violent behaviour. Hence, by shifting focus to how staff position themselves with respect to violence, there is less risk of getting stuck in static descriptors such as ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’.

Violence between staff and youth is a matter of concern, but violence itself is a subject wrapped in taboos and silence. Hence, we have little insight into this topic from the staff perspective. Exceptions include a study by Harris and Leather (2012), who suggest that residential care workers are more at risk for client violence than any other category of social worker. In addition, Grandey et al. (2012) stress that mistreatment from clients could lead to burnout and threats, affecting self-esteem.

Overall, little is known about staff perception of violence and emotions, which calls for further study into how secure unit staff experience and position themselves in violent situations. I would argue that the daily emotional life of secure units is important because it is through the daily performance of emotion that the secure unit itself is managed. The overall aim of this study is to explore narratives about violence and emotion co-created by staff at secure units, specifically through two questions: (1) How do staff narratively position themselves and youth when describing violent situations? (2) How do staff describe the emotional impact violence makes on them?

Previous research

Similarities exist in institutional care across the Nordic countries; however, it is hard to speak of a common Nordic model for secure institutional care (Enell, Gruber, and Vogel 2018). In the main, in the Nordic countries, the placement of young people in institutions occurs not under the criminal justice system,¹ but the child welfare system. A distinction can be made between Sweden and Denmark, on the one hand, which have specific institutions² for detaining youth and where other coercive methods may be used, and Finland and Norway, on the other, which have no specific institutions of this kind, but where instead coercive methods may be used in specific situations within various kinds of residential institutions. This divergence of structure suggests greater use of coercion in Sweden and Denmark, due to the legitimacy of the specific institution (Enell, Gruber, and Vogel 2018). One characteristic the Nordic countries share is the constant presence of control and safety awareness; nevertheless, compared to the UK (cf. Hill, Lockyer, and Stone 2007), the Nordic countries are principally characterized more by a treatment tradition than a retributive tradition.

In Europe at large, multiple studies have focused on violence in secure units, including violence toward staff by youth (Winstanley and Hales 2015, 2008; Alink et al. 2014) and vice versa (Euser et al. 2014; Sekol 2013). Alink et al. (2014) define the secure unit as a ‘violent setting’ for staff as well as youth. Accordingly, within the larger European perspective, the issue of violence in this particular context has been addressed. From a Nordic perspective, an apparent knowledge gap remains, and (even allowing for national differences) investigating the Swedish perspective is likely to provide knowledge applicable to other Nordic countries as well.

In Sweden specifically, few studies have explicitly highlighted violence in secure units. One exception is Svedin (2011), who concludes that youth in secure units do risk exposure to violence by staff. The relationship between staff and youth has also frequently been addressed (Enell 2016; Degner et al. 2015; Andersson and Johansson 2008; Johansson and Andersson 2006). Hill’s (2005) dissertation proposes a division between staff members into those who take an authoritarian, pedagogical approach and those who focus on their relationship with youth. For staff, the central dilemma is finding a balance between the two, as Degner and Hendrikson (2007) also conclude in their work on lack of trust between staff and youth. Researchers have not, however, focused on violence from the staff perspective and how staff narratively position themselves with regard to violence.

Theoretical starting points

The everyday work of staff is theorized here as a practice of emotional labour, which includes the concept of ‘feeling rules’, highlighting a form of latent guidelines for the assessment of fits and misfits between feeling and situation shaping different emotional cultures (Hoschschild 1979, 1983). With the concept of emotional labour, Hochschild highlights the fact that staff must manage the emotions of others whilst also having to control their own. Further, organizational norms require staff to induce or suppress emotions in order to sustain the outward attitudes that produce the proper state of mind. However, Bolton and Boyd (2003), Lively (2000) and Theodosius (2008) expand Hochschild’s concept of emotional labour when they argue that employees govern and control emotions in interaction with their organization, underlining that it is not solely the organization that defines the emotional agenda.

Staff interactions are theorized through the concept of social representation, which recognizes the importance for individuals of orienting themselves within a context: it is about examining the way in which individuals within groups make sense of the environment around them and how these understandings change, evoke new understandings, develop and interact (Danermark et al. 2014; Moscovici 2000; Jodelet 1995; Purkhardt 1993). This paper also uses Davies and Rom (1990) concept of ‘positioning’: i.e., that a person can be positioned, and position him- or herself, within a particular practice. Position, rather than the somewhat rigid concept of role, has been chosen owing to the focus of this study on conversation and the way that staff, through conversation, situate or locate themselves and others, constructing their daily work in relation to violence and emotions. The concept of ‘positions’ is made even more useful by the way that Bolton and Boyd (2003) conceptualize emotional labour as multi-dimensional and by Theodosius (2008) claim that emotion is linked to identity. Hence, positions occur as patterns of beliefs within groups, and positions are ‘social’ because the relevant beliefs of each member in a group are often similar (Harré and Moghaddam 2003).

Method and analytical approach

Focus groups

This article draws on work with five focus groups conducted between January and April 2017.³ The groups were homogenized as far as possible in terms of work and educational experience, based on information provided by their workplace. The assumption was that this would lead to a beneficial group dynamic and facilitate participants expressing their opinions (Billinger 2005 2008). Focus group discussions lasted 60–100 minutes. Audio recordings were made and transcribed verbatim.

Various factors influenced the decision to use focus groups. First, I wanted to get at a collective creation process; moreover, feeling rules tend to reflect group membership. Secondly, violence per se is a sensitive topic (cf. Hydén 2008), but research indicates that the focus group format facilitates sensitive discussions (Överlien, Aronsson, and Hydén 2005). The focus group discussions were initiated by me with the help of stimuli material (Appendix 1). Stimuli material was chosen to shed light on both emotion and violence from a youth perspective, assuming that it would lead the focus group to take a staff perspective. The same approach was used in all five groups. As moderator, I assumed a guiding role, aiming to encourage everyone to participate so that they would create their own discussions and thereby express their own social knowledge (Wibeck 2010). The focus groups thus provided a forum for staff to discuss their own, specifically work-related perceptions, experiences, ideas and strategies, with an emphasis on violence and emotions. In addition, the focus group method makes it possible to study different viewpoints and opinions on a topic, which results in broad data collection (Wibeck 2010; Linhorst 2002; Kitzinger 1994).

Analysis

The analysis relies on two approaches presented in this section. These two approaches are linked by the view that meaning is created through experiences that are expressed within groups of other people (cf. Bruner 1987).

Narrative thematic analysis

By using a narrative thematic analysis (Riessman 2008; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber 1998), I sought to develop a detailed understanding of staff experiences of violence and emotions within secure units. The overall approach took Riessman’s (2008) definition of ‘narrative’ as a starting point, understanding narratives as time- and context-bound speech organized around events in consecutive order. Four steps identified in Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber (1998) directed the analytical process: (1) Selection of the subtext, i.e., moving text from the whole. In this step, I read every single transcription and extracted narrative excerpts, based on my research questions. I identified 84 narrative excerpts: 8–24 in each focus group. (2) Definition of the content categories. The 84 excerpts were categorized into 25 categories objective to the research questions. (3) Sorting the categories into themes. The 25 categories were then assigned to larger themes. I identified four themes: normalisation of violence, importance of trust in co-workers, violent youth and collegial pressure. Within each theme, I chose one excerpt to explore in this paper that represents the core messages of the theme. As Dalen (2015) notes, excerpts are chosen because they capture ‘the essential’ and could stand in for many others (cf. Corden and Sainsbury 2006). Step (1) to (3) highlight the movement between theory and empirical material in the creation of subtext, categories and themes. (4) Drawing conclusions from the results. This involved formulating an overall picture of the content with respect to how staff narratively position themselves, and youth when describing violent situations and how staff describe the emotional impact that violence has on them.

Interaction analysis

Approach two, the interaction analysis (Wästerfors 2013; Halkier 2010), focuses on the content of the group interaction, taking particular note of two aspects. The first is how each individual sustains or produces a self-narrative in interaction with others. The second is how this process partly relies on implicit conventions about ‘how-to-do’, which in turn shapes a local contextual frame for how social relations are produced and reproduced among the participants (Halkier 2010). The participants’ statements (sentences) are considered as elements in their self-representations, leading to the development of a form of social identity between and among the participants, which is seen in relation to violence and emotion as well as the context (Wästerfors 2013).

Secure units: context of the study

In Sweden, the National Board of Institutional Care⁴ (SiS) provides all compulsory care for youth and in recent years it has reported increased violence between staff and youth (SiS 2017a) Statens Institutionsstyrelse 2017b; cf. Aalborg 2016). The staff participating in this study all work at Swedish state-operated, secure 24-h secure units for young people aged 15–21. They have far-reaching legal authority over the youth, including controlling their calls and deciding whether to hold them in seclusion (Sallnäs 2012). Their emotional work entails, e.g., showing interest, concern, joy, and sympathy for the youth, while perhaps suppressing feelings such as disgust, anger, fear or anxiety (cf. Grandey et al. 2012; Lively 2000). Secure units are located in rural areas, away from other buildings and often fenced in. Youth are mostly confined to their unit, except for medical or district court visits. The most common reasons for placement in a secure unit are criminality, substance abuse or other socially destructive behaviour. Most cases fall under the Care of Young Persons Act.⁵ In 2017, 1114 young people (380 girls and 734 boys) were placed in 23 different institutions in Sweden (all state-licensed). A so-called ADAD⁶ (Adolescent drug abuse diagnosis) report (SiS 2017b) provides a general picture of their psychological condition before institutionalization. More than one-third of these young people reported being subjected to psychological or physical violence by a parental figure. They also reported a high degree of psychological vulnerability, including severe trust issues, depression and suicidal thoughts.

Informants

The participants (n = 27) in the current study came from three different secure units. Step one was to contact the head of the institution to request permission to enter the institution. Step two was to contact ward supervisors, and this led to the process of creating each focus group. Participants were thus selected in cooperation with supervisors at each institution based on their knowledge and experiences but gave independent consent to participate in the study. Three out of six institutions⁷ rejected my initial request for entry; thus the gatekeeper seems not to be individual staff, but the head of the institution.

• Focus group 1: Six members, four men and two women, working with boys only, one–three years of work experience at the unit (Unit 1).

• Focus group 2: Five members, four men and one woman, working with boys only, 7 months to 15 years of work experience at the unit (Unit 1).

• Focus group 3: Six members, three men and three women, working with girls only, 3–19 years of work experience at the unit (Unit 2).

• Focus group 4: Four members, one man and three women, working with boys only, 6 months to six and a half years of work experience at the unit (Unit 3).

• Focus group 5: Six members, five men and one woman, working with boys only, 1–2 years of work experience at the unit (Unit 3).

In total, 10 women and 17 men participated in the study. Their median age was 36. Participants were social workers, sometimes with therapist training, or treatment staff with varying backgrounds and experience. Some participants had no prior education or work experience. All had undergone workplace training in motivational interviewing and conflict management.

Results

The results section is organized around four themes: (1) normalisation of violence, showing how staff position themselves emotionally when they experience violence; (2) the importance of trust in co-workers, highlighting how staff emotionally position fear as centred on co-workers, not youth, emphasizing a shift from the violent youth to the unreliable colleague; (3) violent youth, centring on how staff position youth as the violent parties; and (4) collegial pressure, showing how staff members, under pressure from colleagues, position themselves as violent actors.

Normalization of violence

In the excerpt below, focus group 3, consisting of staff who worked only with girls, describes their emotional reactions to violence, highlighting their feeling rules.

Excerpt 1 – Sofia, Leo, Axel, Monica, Micke⁸

1. Axel:/…/⁹ A month ago, I changed ward, to the locked ward,

2. and that was because we worked with that girl who threatened

3. me with a knife a year ago. I was experiencing the

4. psychological rage against me. For example, I could just lie in

5. my sofa at home on a day off or be on my way to work

6. and just start to think about her and then feel my heart race.

7. Monica: mm

8. Axel: I checked my blood pressure many times at work during

9. the worst period and it was very high.

10. Micke: yes

11. Axel: That feeling is not nice to have. I came to think about it

12. now, after what you said about your heart when you were

13. supposed to wake that girl up. Not funny at all.

14. Monica:/…/I know your story, however it turns out the same

15. anyway even if we have changed staff and it is not the same

16. girl. Then I feel, no wait, I am trying to be like He-Man. I

17. mean I thought it went so well and there was no danger, but

18. when I felt that danger first the other day/…/and then that

19. feeling when I went up today/…/Yesterday they pushed the

20. right buttons. I am scared [Leo: mm], and I am not supposed

21. to be scared at my job, end of story. However, I can

22. understand, it is my own fault. I have done this. Then our

23. supervisor just said stop. It is not okay to hit the staff. Yeah

24. right. It is also not okay to threaten, scream or to shout mean

25. things. Yet I can feel and understand that, but it will happen

26. anyway.

27. Sofia: mm

28. Monica: I cannot go home and cry just because someone has

29. shouted at me that I am stupid, but when I notice it is directed

30. against me all the time

(31)Leo: yes

(32)Monica: it must be highlighted/…/

The essence of excerpt 1 is how Axel positions himself as vulnerable (lines 1–6) i.e., showing his emotion when experiencing violence. His positioning helps the group create an overall narrative, displaying an emotional labour in which the staff should not be required to tolerate absolutely anything (cf. Euser et al. 2014). The central question here is how staff handle their emotions, underlining that feeling rules are created within the staff group and not based only on organizational norms, emphasizing Bolton and Boyd (2003) concept of emotional labour.

Monica’s ongoing situation (lines 14–26) involving a girl on the ward who has hit her twice illustrates these processes. Monica has tried to stand up to the violent behaviour in various ways. One is by thinking that she is strong – she refers to being like ‘He-Man’ (line 16). Monica, in line with ideas about emotional labour (Hoschschild 1983), tries to keep her emotions to herself, while Axel does the opposite by letting himself appear vulnerable. In her study of violence in psychiatric care, Aalborg (2016) stresses the need for staff to show a ‘mental hardness’ and a readiness to act in violent situations. At first sight, it appears that Monica is adopting these strategies. It is also possible, however, to interpret this excerpt as showing different kinds of emotional labour, with an apparent balance between being strong (i.e. not showing emotions) and being weak (i.e. showing emotions) that in turn generates different consequences for staff members’ daily work. As the interaction progresses Monica reflects on the incident, now clearly expressing fear and arguing that she should not work if she is afraid, thus apparently departing from her ‘He-Man’ stance. Monica does not do this alone, however; her supervisor helps her (line 23) by stressing that youth are not allowed to hit the staff. The latter is an example of the creation process for feeling rules, highlighting that emotional culture is not a static phenomenon. Another interpretation is that Axel initiated his own narrative in order to help Monica handle her situation by signalling that it is okay to feel frightened, which also illustrates the creation process for feeling rules (cf. Bolton and Boyd 2003).

Simultaneously, a level of complexity emerges when Monica (lines 25–26 and 28–29) highlights the normalization of violence. This is a point all the groups brought up: a process of adjustment. Monica’s comment reveals a feeling (widely shared) that prolonged exposure to violence is dangerous. Her comment might be intended to emphasize Axel’s opening remark about having just changed wards due to his long-term exposure to psychological violence. Thus, implicitly Axel and Monica may be helping each other in different ways, by telling the group and themselves about how they emotionally position themselves – being ‘He-Man’, or not (cf. Purkhardt 1993: Davies and Rom 1990).

In sum, excerpt 1 shows how Axel’s emotional positioning through his feeling rules helps Monica to adopt a new position. This change, however, takes place under a condition: the normalization of violence, supplied with questions such as ‘what is violence?’ and ‘how should we react?’

The importance of trust in co-workers

This excerpt presents a discussion from focus group 1 addressing feelings of fear at work. Members of this group only work with boys. They have previously touched on the subject of fear, but here they deepen their discussion, focusing on emotions in their immediate work situations.

Excerpt 2 – Lena, Ben, Adam, Richard, Bella

1. Lena: Have you ever felt frightened on the ward?

2. Ben: Uncertain, not afraid. Unsure of my co-workers

3. Adam: more unsure of them, than the youth. Right?

4. Ben: Exactly

5. Adam: Yes, colleagues are more difficult to read, the

6. youth are more predictable

7. Ben: Yes, actually

8. Adam: And that can lead to insecurity

9. Richard: I feel safe when I know who will come when I

10. press the alarm

11. Adam: agree

12. Ben: I feel the same/…/

13. Richard: You know who will come and it is not the ones who

14. hide at the ward

15. Ben: But I got stuck in one of those situations, when I already

16. was in it. I could not press the alarm and the other colleague

17. did not press either and he did not help me hold the other

18. boy who entered the situation and hit me in the back/…/

19. Richard:/…/When you know who will come when you press

20. the alarm, you can wait a little bit longer to press the alarm

21. Bella: exactly

22. Richard: maybe you will end the situation before it escalates

23. Adam: I recognize the thing you said about being with a

24. colleague who should press the alarm, but doesn’t. They

25. do not understand how, they press it the wrong way. They

26. ‘freeze’. ‘How does it work?’ Then you stand there alone

27. with two boys who you have to take away. If you are calm

28. yourself it will work. I had to take the alarm by myself and

29. one boy under each arm. But of course if you are by

30. yourself this could create some frustration.

The key point here is the focus on unreliable colleagues, underlining a distinction drawn between insecure staff who are afraid of the youth and confident staff who are made nervous by their unreliable colleagues. In certain elements of staff daily work, fear and weakness are seen as problematic, because staff must depend on each other. It is further revealed that some feelings are not appropriate to show, a phenomenon also highlighted by Lively (2000), generating a dissonance between inner and outer emotional expressions.

Excerpt 2 centres around Lena’s initial question, ‘Have you ever felt frightened?’ This stresses a narrative struggle within the group and highlights the acceptable position, i.e., tolerable feeling rules. Ben begins to answer Lena but quickly shifts focus, replying that he is not afraid of the boys, just insecure about his co-workers. His statement changes the direction of the interaction and the group now follows his feeling rules. Adam clearly follows Ben (lines 3 and 5–6), strengthening the narrative of insecurity. The group narrative is about violent youth and related emotions. However, they take a detour through their co-workers instead of explicitly discussing their own emotions with respect to the youth. Trusting each other becomes more important than expressing their feelings in relation to the youth. For example, Richard (lines 9–10 and 13–14) mentions that knowing who will respond when you activate the alarm gives you a sense of security, spurring responses by both Ben (lines 15–18) and Adam (line 23–30). Both Ben and Adam were alone in these situations, but neither expresses any fear (bearing in mind Lena’s initial question). One interpretation is that fear of youth is not an acceptable feeling, hence the experience of fear is redirected toward colleagues. Therefore, in contrast to excerpt 1, the feeling rule expressed here specifies not being afraid of the youth. This illustrates emotional labour among the staff, and following Theodosius (2008), the negotiation in this excerpt might be seen as a distinction process between co-workers, where it is important to not feel afraid.

In sum, excerpt 2 shows a reluctance to engage with the emotional position of being afraid of youth. Instead, the group tacitly chooses another theme that is easier to talk about. Possibly, the overall narrative of unreliable colleagues is one the group is used to discussing, as opposed to the more loaded topic of their own fear (cf. Crawley 2004; Jodelet 1995).

The violent youth

Below are the initial reflections of focus group 1 when I asked them to give examples of violence at work.

Excerpt 3 – Lena, Ben, Adam, Richard

1. Ben: there was that situation we were in, when we had a big

2. plank against us./…/

3. Richard: It was exciting

4. Ben: There we didn’t have any choice, but to

5. Richard: He had a big plank from the bed, that he had ripped

6. off, that he was going to hit himself in the head with

7. Ben: So we just acted to protect colleagues, myself and

8. then

9. Richard: then him

10. Adam: not so much space to talk about it, he was going to

11. physically attack instantly./…/

12. Richard: but later we saw with the same boy how it would

13. end if we didn’t act right away

14. Ben: more trouble

15. Richard: he smashed up the entire ward and took hostages

16. Ben: sometimes the action has to be fast and strong, based on

17. what you can do

18. Lena: but if there are more situations like this, with isolations

19. continuously, you must ask yourself if you can do better.

The key point here is the creation of a representation (Jodelet 1995) of the youth as the violent party, a dynamic that emerged in all the focus groups. A common picture of the youth becomes evident, in turn underlining a specific emotional culture where it is important for staff to protect each other, possibly maintaining an ‘us vs. them culture’: i.e., how staff perceive youth has consequences for their daily work.

The excerpt centres on a violent situation where Ben argues they had no choice but to use violence (line 4). Although Richard (lines 5–6) tries to move away from constructing the young man as an attacker, Ben continues with it (lines 7–8) and stresses that their actions were motivated primarily by the need to protect first their colleagues, then themselves and finally the boy. His position reflects organizational norms, implying that he must defend himself, and it wins ground in the group. Adam, for instance (line 10–11), says that since the situation allowed them no time to talk, they had to act quickly or the boy would physically attack them. Interestingly, Richard then changes track (line 12), supporting Adam by adding that based on later experiences with this boy they knew what would happen if they did not act. Their negotiation implies a specific culture arising from their interactions with one another and the boy: perpetrator and victim. As Wästerfors (2009) stresses, violence can be seen as an ongoing situation, where reciprocity is an important aspect. However, one interpretation here is that the reciprocity of violence is neglected. That can be understood as how a specific emotional culture is created where the youth becomes the violent part, which has consequences for the staffs’ daily practice.

Lena resists, however (line 18–19). She says that if these situations arise constantly, maybe something is wrong, and implies that there might be a better way to deal with them. Through Lena, the lack of choice that Ben articulates and the rest of the group accepts is problematized and not allowed to be the only alternative. Now the group must also relate to Lena’s perception that ‘we can do better’. As in previous excerpts, the participants here fail to mention the vulnerability of the boy explicitly, although Richard and Lena propose two alternate understandings. One points to the vulnerable youth and the other to staff wrongdoing, illustrating a dynamic, which emphasizes how Bolton and Boyd (2003) describe emotional labour as multi-dimensional regarding feeling rules.

This excerpt has important implications: namely, that the representation of youth as violent remains solidly rooted, which in turn produces certain emotional cultures highlighting how staff perceive themselves, their colleagues and the youth.

Collegial pressure

Excerpt 4 shows how participants in focus group 4, who work with boys only, positioned themselves in talking about their own violence. The group has just been talking about a young man whose physical violence caused them many problems.

Excerpt 4 – Nina, Freja, Johanna, Anders

1. Nina:/…/When I think about my old workplace [another

2. SiS unit], where staff chose to instigate a violent situation

3. just to get the boys to move. I was in on that and I was

4. affected by that. In the end, it was like if I did not

5. participate in that action I would be bullied on the ward.

6. You ended up being excluded if you did not participate.

7. Freja: yes

8. Anders: mm

9. Nina: You were so affected by the other staff who ‘now we do

10. this’ or ‘we act like this here’ [Anders: mm] because

11. if you were left out, you were really exposed. If you felt,

12. ‘I don’t buy this’/…/

13. Johanna: You cannot say you don’t buy it

14. Nina: No, no way. You just agree, that is how it was. I do not

15. know how many times I have gone home and felt broken

16. down. I did not feel this was okay, but my voice was not so

17. strong at the institution/…/

The key point here is how dissonance between inner and outer feelings makes Nina act against her will (cf. Jodelet 1995; Hoschschild 1983), explicitly highlighting organizational norms and collegial processes.

Nina’s report to the group and the absence of objections to her narrative shows one way that both collegial processes and organizational norms accept violence against youth and perhaps share feelings of exhaustion. Staff members govern and control their emotions in interaction with their organization (cf. Bolton and Boyd 2003). In contrast to excerpt 3, the staff here are described as initiators of violence, offering insight into how they position themselves in respect to violence (cf. Alink et al. 2014; Euser et al. 2014). The importance of this excerpt is not that Nina acted violently, but rather the collective force, i.e., collegial pressure, which, as in excerpt 3, implies an ‘us vs. them’ culture.

Nina emphasizes her emotional reactions and the consequences to her if she does not fall in line. Her reasoning highlights the importance of organizational norms (cf. Sekol 2013), within which you help each other no matter what. This was observed in all groups. Nina describes (lines 3–6 and 9–12) feeling forced to participate in violence or face social exclusion on the ward, addressing the tension between outer and inner emotional fitting. The next shift in this interaction is on line 13, where Johanna explicitly confirms Nina’s previous statement. This seems to help Nina be even more specific in her emotional position. Nina expresses emotional stress and explains how feeling unable to do the right thing meant that she frequently went home and cried after leaving work. Her emotional labour included managing not only the feelings of others but also her own, making the job highly stressful (cf. Grandey et al. 2012; Crawley 2004; Lively 2000). Overall, it seemed easier for staff to talk about youth violence than their own. Nevertheless, Nina specifies an emotional culture bound with specific feeling rules, stipulating the difficulty of working in a care context. Further, as the position of the staff as aggressors emerges, we should recall the ADAD report (Statens Institutionsstyrelse 2017b) in which one-third of youth reported previous exposure to violence by a parental figure (cf. Euser et al. 2014). The staff use of violence suggests an ‘us vs them’ culture. In contrast to excerpt 3, excerpt 4 illustrates feeling rules that are more connected to the actions of staff than of youth. The common ground, however, remains the representation of youth as violent.

In sum, as we have already seen, organizational norms are very powerful, leading in this case to an argument that when it comes to violence against youth, the focus should be on the secure unit per se, not individual staff members.

Discussion

This study set out to explore how staff narratively position themselves and youth when describing violent situations and how staff describe the emotional impact of working in a setting marked by violence. The results show how staff help each other to find positions – such as being vulnerable at the individual level and frightened at the group level – resulting in an expansion of feeling rules. However, the definition of the concept of violence is still narrow, threats and other psychological violent acts are not understood as violence. The results further show that in spite of consistently representing youth as violent, staff have difficulty expressing fear of youth, an apparent contradiction.

Narrative helping – finding your feeling rules in order to cope with perceived violence

The process of narrative helping highlights how a group, as a whole or as individuals, identifies its position and feeling rules (cf. Bolton and Boyd 2003; Purkhardt 1993; Davies and Rom 1990; Hoschschild 1979). Their position and feeling rules help them to emotionally handle perceived violence. Excerpts 2 and 3 illustrate how narrative helping lets groups convene around topics they find most tolerable, i.e., ‘violent youth’ and ‘fearless staff’, which both lead to the acceptance of specific feeling rules shaping the content of their emotional labour. Following Bolton and Boyd (2003), I argue that the staff group has power in this creation process; it is not the institution alone that shapes these rules. Staff conform to feeling rules, not because they are forced to by the organization, but rather under pressure from complex collegial processes to confirm – although as Bolton and Boyd (ibid.) conclude, the boundaries are blurry. Halkier (2010) also points this out as a local contextual shaping process. In excerpt 1, however, the process is more one of helping one another find adequate emotional positions, highlighting the reciprocity of feeling rules. Further, in excerpt 1, narrative helping allows the group to create a local consensus that points to the normalization process of violence: although physical violence is not accepted, psychological violence is.

The struggle to maintain a coherent representation of the youth – an emotional culture that emphasize the violent youth

All groups displayed some kind of narrative struggle in trying to maintain a coherent social representation of youth as the violent party (cf. Harris and Leather 2012). In excerpt 1 this is done through the staff’s vulnerability; in excerpt 2 it is done the from perspective that the staff should not express fear and in excerpt 3 it is illustrated through the idea that the staff has no choice but to use violence. These three examples illustrate different emotional cultures: on the one hand, hardness and toughness, and on the other hand, flexibility regarding staff emotional responses to violence (cf. Aalborg 2016). As Lively (2000) proposes, not showing emotions may be about maintaining a tough professional facade. Jodelet (1995) has also argued that the concept of social representation has to do with how different individuals mutually create a collective idea of reality around themselves. Excerpt 3, however, offers two examples of how group participants try to challenge that stable representation through counter-narratives that express a different positioning and different feeling rules. As Theodosius (2008) observes, emotional labour also involves making distinctions between staff (cf. Monrad 2016) because the group creates, through a contradictory self-construction, a story in which they, as a group and as individuals, defend and protect their colleagues (cf. Calheiros et al. 2015; Danermark et al. 2014; Harré and Moghaddam 2003; Bruner 1987).

The contradictory shift from youth to staff – an emotional culture that emphasize the relationship between co-workers

The results also demonstrate, contradictorily, the establishment of a shift away from youth toward the staff, showing that emotional cultures are less stable than it would first appear. Excerpt 2 illustrates this process, which imbues the concept of emotional labour with new meaning as the group argues for the necessity of managing the emotions of their colleagues, but not their youth clients (cf. Crawley 2004; Bolton and Boyd 2003). Excerpt 2 also challenges the stable representation of youth as dangerous (cf. excerpts 1 and 3), in that staff, fear their colleagues more than they fear the youth. Emotional labour is performed more explicitly in accordance with organizational norms when staff perceive youth as violent (cf. Hoschschild 1983). Still, focusing on scared colleagues implicitly maintains the representation of youth as violent, with the difference that particular staff do not explicitly express ‘I’m not afraid’: that is, there is an avoidance of their own feelings. It is important, however, for staff to be open to their emotional responses to violence and reflect on what norms their emotions could be linked to. This would probably lead to more flexibility in creating feeling rules in settings such as the secure unit (cf. Bolton and Boyd 2003).

The study has limitations; two methodological aspects are worth noting. First, using a stimuli material always poses the risk that participants will adapt their answers to make them consonant with the presented material and with each other. When I noticed such things, I addressed it, which in turn provided a more fruitful discussion. Secondly, a focus group is an artificial setting and there is a risk that less dominant group members will not express their true opinions. Some focus group members were more active than others, which I addressed in individual interviews.¹⁰

Conclusion

Violence in secure units does not involve individuals only. It can also be understood as a product of the organization, embedded with specific emotions. Therefore, I would like to make three concluding remarks. First, it is essential for staff to acknowledge that violence can take many forms, and as a result, their definition of violence needs to be broadened. With a broader definition, secure units could be understood as a caring setting as well as a violent context, underlining the importance of acknowledging and handling this inherent tension in their everyday work. Second, in order to challenge the representation of youth as violent, staff need to acknowledge individual youth perspectives. In doing so, the working alliance between staff and youth becomes important. This relationship could then become a protective factor against future violence. Third, it is important that the emotion of fear, whether it stems from interaction with co-workers or youths, is made visible in this particular context without being connected to shame or other emotions whereby the staff feel they have acted incorrectly. Therefore, future research should focus on the emotional geography of institutions, since feeling rules are a subtle, often latent product of the working context. One way to address these three concerns is through training and supervision of staff, both prior to hiring and throughout their tenure.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Stockholm University.

Notes

1. Regarding youth and the criminal justice system in the Nordic countries see further, e.g., Lappi-Seppälä (2011).

2. In Swedish: särskilda ungdomshem. In Danish: sikret institution.

3. The study was approved by the Local Ethical Committee in Stockholm, reference number 2016/2165–31/5.

4. Statens Institutionsstyrelse (SiS).

5. Lagen (1990: 52) med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av unga (LVU).

6. The self-reported Adolescent Drug Abuse Diagnosis (ADAD) interview provides information about the youth based on nine areas of life, which is physical health, education, labour/employment, leisure, friends, family relations, mental health, crime and the use of alcohol and drugs.

7. The institutions were chosen based on geographical considerations.

8. All names in this paper are fictional.

9. /…/ signifies text removed.

10. Described in a forthcoming paper.

11. http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=6532793

Appendix 1.

This excerpt is from an article published by Radio Sweden on 4 October 2016.¹¹

Amira, who has lived in several different SiS homes, has a diagnosed illness that makes it difficult for her to control her emotions, and has become aggressive at times.

Staff have put her on the floor on multiple occasions, according to records viewed by Radio Sweden.

‘You get panicky. All you can think is that you want to break free, and that makes you even more aggressive. Finally it spins out of control. You’re lying on your stomach on the floor, sometimes multiple people are holding you down,’ said Amira.

‘Then I’ll start feeling like I can’t breathe. I have to break free. I struggle even harder. They want you to calm down so they keep sitting on you.’