The Crime, Justice & Society Seminar Series presents
The Youth Justice Paradox: Young Lives in the Shadows of Slovenian Penal Exceptionalism
About the event
This lecture illuminates the concealed challenges some groups of young people face within the ostensibly lenient and welfare-oriented Slovenian youth justice system. Despite Slovenia's reputation as a penal exceptionalist, the lecture builds on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 150 prosecutorial and 170 judicial juvenile criminal law case files to uncover the obscured harm routes shaped by the intricate interactions between educational, welfare, and criminal justice institutions. By examining these hidden pathways, the lecture exposes how harm silently permeates horizontally, between institutions, and vertically, across all stages of the youth justice system.
Challenging the conventional categorisations of punitive jurisdictions and penal exceptionalists solely based on normative frameworks and visible criminal justice parameters, this lecture offers a nuanced exploration. By dissecting the complexities of Slovenian youth justice, the lecture underscores the necessity of considering subtle manifestations and conceptualisations of penality. In doing so, it raises fundamental questions about the broader discourse surrounding penal exceptionalism, prompting a reevaluation of existing narratives and paving the way for a more comprehensive understanding of youth justice paradigms.