Negotiating Confinement: Everyday Life In Indian Juvenile Legal System

Background

Juvenile correctional facilities are structured environments where institutional priorities, social relationships, and young people’s personal histories intersect in complex ways. Existing research on the Indian Juvenile Legal System has largely centered on the perspectives of institutional stakeholders while the voices and experiences of youth themselves have remained unexamined. This absence limits understanding of how confinement is lived, negotiated, and made meaningful by those most directly affected. This study aims to fill this gap by asking: (1) How do youth experience and navigate changes in family relationships during confinement? (2) What roles do peer interactions play in shaping everyday life within the facility?

Methods:

This study draws on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in a state-run juvenile correctional facility in India. Data for this study was collected through observation of daily routines, semi-structured interviews with 11 incarcerated youth aged 12–18 and document analysis. Fieldnotes and interview transcripts were analyzed iteratively, with attention to recurring patterns in how youth described relationships, responsibilities, and future aspirations, as well as how these were organized through institutional practices.

Findings:

Three key themes emerged from the analysis, highlighting the roles of institutional stakeholders, peer relationships, and family in shaping youths’ experiences of confinement.

First, institutional stakeholders were primarily oriented toward maintaining order and routine within the facility. Daily practices emphasized discipline, compliance, and the smooth functioning of institutional schedules. As a result, much of the relational and affective labor of navigating confinement remained unaddressed within formal institutional processes.

Second, in the relative absence of sustained stakeholder engagement in youths’ social and emotional worlds, informal peer arrangements emerged as a central feature of everyday life. Youth formed relationships characterized by care, mutual support, and shared strategies for coping with confinement. These peer networks functioned as important sources of stability, where young people looked out for one another, offered encouragement, and collectively maintained a sense of hope.

Third, confinement reshaped familial relationships in significant ways, altering how youth understood their roles, responsibilities, and emotional connections to family members. At the same time, these altered relationships played a crucial role in shaping their imagined futures. Participants frequently articulated aspirations centered on family framing their post-release goals in terms of contributing economically, restoring trust, and fulfilling expected familial roles. In this sense, family remained a key reference point through which youth made sense of both their present circumstances and future possibilities.

Conclusions

This study shows that youth in juvenile correctional facilities are not passive recipients of institutional control but actively sustain social worlds within constrained conditions. Contrary to dominant assumptions that peer networks in custodial settings are primarily sources of risk, youth described relationships grounded in care, mutual support, and the shared work of enduring confinement. The study also shows that confinement reshapes rather than severs family relationships. Interventions should therefore focus on facilitating more consistent and meaningful family contact while recognizing and supporting positive peer relationships as integral to everyday survival within confinement.