"Why can't you guys just talk like me?": an exploration of court-involved young adults' responses to language barriers

Abstract

While existing scholarship has established that younger justice-involved populations tend to experience language difficulties to a greater degree than their nondelinquent peers (Anderson, Hawes, & Snow, 2016), there are limited attempts in the literature exploring how younger populations experience and respond to language barriers in the courtroom. Moreover, questions regarding how language barriers may influence younger justice-involved populations’ perceptions of fairness and legitimacy of the court process remain underdeveloped. I explore these gaps through ten in-depth qualitative interviews with male court-involved young adults within an alternative to incarceration program. Findings show that respondents attribute language barriers as consequences of varied sources; however, the recognition of these sources all illustrate the disadvantaged social location of respondents in comparison to court officials. Similarly, language barriers appear to exacerbate respondents’ feelings of procedural injustice, leading respondents to enact various coping strategies when faced with instances of perceived bias and mistreatment by the court. As a result, this study provides needed insight into the lived realities of court-involved young adults in relation to experienced language barriers, while also demonstrating the key role that language plays in younger justice-involved populations’ responses to procedural injustice.