April 2008

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Articles from the special electronic issue of the Flinders Journal of Law Reform, April 2008.

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An Exploration of the Experience of Interaction between the Police and Juvenile Offenders in Taiwan
(Flinders University School of Law, 2008-04) Chen, Chih-Ching; Hsu, Hua-Fu
By developing Foucault’s concepts of power, this paper aims to explore the interaction experience between Taiwanese police and juvenile offenders from a critical perspective. From macro analysis of social discourse to micro daily practice, the study objectives are to examine whether the police act as a mechanism of discourse formation for juvenile offenders, to articulate how the strategies and techniques are enforced or strengthened and to scrutinise how juveniles are disciplined and resisted. The findings reveal that the dual-oppositional discourses are constructed by defining juveniles as either ‘normal’ or ‘deviant’. Through the discipline and inspection techniques used by police, juveniles are forced to fit the image of the ‘normal juvenile’. To maintain a sense of their autonomous self, juveniles choose to resist these stereotypes. The struggle contributes to the criminal discourse reproduction, pushing juveniles into categories of criminal offenders. It is hoped that this paper can offer a framework for analysing and discussing policy in criminology and criminal justice.