Is there dignity in justice? An exploration of young peoples’ lived experiences of contact with the broad Australian legal landscape

Abstract

This study raises awareness of adolescents’ responses to practice interactions with the variety of legal actors who work within the broad range of formal and informal contexts and settings that together comprise the Australian legal system; an area of social work research that is largely unexplored. A qualitative framework influenced by feminist poststructural, intersectional and response-based concepts was utilised to explore an overarching research question: “How do emerging adults perceive and make sense of their lived experiences of legal actors’ practices during their earlier interactions in Australian legal settings?”. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted in a democratic and collaborative research space. In focussing attention to adolescents’ lived experiences through the contrast and comparison of the accounts of 10 emerging adults and 10 legal actors, this inquiry opened opportunities to disrupt discursive practices that essentialise adolescents and highlighted interconnections between legal actors’ power, and adolescent dignity and resistance. Analysis confirmed that the legal system can be broadly defined to include formal contexts in which legal actors are subject to practice rules often guided or interpreted by judicial officers in court contexts. Additionally, that the legal system’s broader definition also extends to environments outside these formal contexts, to non-formal contexts not governed by practice rules, allowing for individual interpretations of practice interactions. Analysis reveals the two groups share common perceptions including: that adolescents have clear understandings of the performance of relations of power across contexts; the connection between youth resistance and asymmetries of power; and, that youth responses to practice interactions can involve experiencing emotional and mental distress. Findings also reveal that positive dignity experiences framed within positive social responses are linked to positive experiences of power even in the face of negative legal outcomes. Ultimately, youth dignity is indicated as the key component of supportive, meaningful and effective direct practice that lowers risk of emotional and mental harm for adolescents in contact with the legal system. Discussion includes the prospect that future practice in the legal system should be founded on relational and ethical practice competencies underpinned by an ethic of justice-doing, ensuring legal actors authentically interact with, and attend to adolescents as unique multiple-identitied human beings.