Temporal Experiences of Confinement: Exploring Young People’s Experiences in Danish Secure Institutions

Abstract

This article explores temporality in young peoples’ narratives of confinement on welfare grounds in Danish secure institutions. The analysis draws on data from two qualitative studies on young people’s experiences of confinement. Drawing on Michael Flaherty’s conceptualization of ‘making time’ (Flaherty, M. G., 2002, Symbolic Interaction, 25, 3, 379–388), we explore the unsteady passing of time, the agentic practices of manipulating and obliterating time and how bureaucratic power is exercised by depriving young people control of their time and subjecting them to slow or even ‘dead’ time in isolation or waiting for release. While secure institutions are closed institutions, this article explores the permeability of closed institutions by looking at temporality as a dimension that links the inside and outside while also contributing to create specific experiences of temporal and spatial divisions. This perspective on young people’s temporal experiences contributes empirically to scholarship on the confinement of young people and it has practical implications for the service provision for troubled and troublesome young people.