Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice

Avi Brisman is a Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, USA, an Adjunct Professor in the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and an Honorary Professor at Newcastle Law School at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

• "Sign Me Up!": Recruiting Kids for the Red Hook Youth Court: An Introduction, 1. A Typical RHYC Training Schedule, 2. Week I: What to do When Stopped by the Police Workshop, 3. Week I: Welcome and Introduction to the Red Hook Youth Court and Understanding the Youth Court/Restorative Justice, 4. Week II: Offenses, Consequences, and Sanctions, 5. Week II: Understanding the Youth Offender, 6. Week III: Critical Thinking, 7. Week III: Objectivity, 8. Week IV: Precision Questioning/Courtroom Demeanor, 9. Week IV: Roles of the Court, 10. Week V: Judge and Bailiff, 11. Week V: Community Advocate Opening Statements, 12. Week VI: Community Advocate Closing Statements, 13. Week VI: Pre-Hearing Interview/Youth Advocate Opening and Closing Statements, 14. Week VII: Youth Advocate Closing Statements (Continued), 15. Week VII: Customer Service, 16. (A) Conclusion (of Sorts), Postscript: Drifts, Drift and Chronicles

With Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice, Avi Brisman provides us an in-depth, close-up and invaluable look at the raw material and initial insights that ethnographic accounts are built upon. Weaving moments of self-reflection and biographical tidbits into raw fieldnotes, this book lifts the veil on the research and idea-building process. This rich, novel and highly readable contribution may help to catalyze the next wave of qualitative studies of crime and justice – and it will be particularly valuable and energizing to those heading out into the field for the first time. Randy Myers, University of Washington, TacomaThe poet Walt Whitman wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes." Scaffolding as Structure is large, too, as measured not by word count but by the multitude of intellectual endeavors it contains. In it Avi Brisman ruminates on crime and criminology, sustains an engaged conversation with the young people and staff members he studies, and constructs an innovative text that is both prequel and sequel to his existing scholarship. Interwoven with all this are a backstage autoethnography of the research process and a rich account of its day-to-day particulars – and beyond that, a multitude of insights that escape the boundaries of conventional criminological writing.Jeff Ferrell, Texas Christan University, Texas