No Matter Your Age, “It’s Your Life, It’s Your Choice”: Compulsory Persuasion and Informal Rehabilitative Support in Youth and Adult Intensive Supervision Programs

Abstract

Although existing literature identifies that public protection and risk reduction are the primary goals of intensive supervision programs (ISP), little is known about how or whether rehabilitation of high-risk offenders is prioritized outside of enforcing court-mandated conditions. Using qualitative semi-structured interviews and focus groups within two Canadian metropolitan ISPs, our study explores how rehabilitative support is offered to youth and adult high-risk offenders in the absence of formal conditions. Using the framework of late-modern rehabilitation and compulsory persuasion, we draw on themes of offender responsibilization and coercion to interrogate the provision of informal rehabilitative support. Our findings indicate that officers negotiate “voluntary agreements” with select high-risk offenders, which hierarchicalizes them into two groups: those worthy of informal support and those who “choose” not to want to rehabilitate. We also find that youth and adults are treated similarly despite substantive differences between the types of crimes committed.