LESSON 1 UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The Meaning, Nature and Use of Roles

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Presented by

THE NATURAL SYSTEMS INSTITUTE

Copyright, Ed Young, July 2002 1

SECTION X FORMAL ROLE STRUCTURES IN THE INSTITUTIONAL SETTING AND YOUTH'S IDENTITY FORMATION

EXAMINING FORMAL ROLE STRUCTURES AND EMERGENT INFORMAL ROLES IN ADOLESCENCE WE FIND THAT ROLES POSSESS A TRANSFORMING POWER TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR LESSONS IN SECTION X

1.The Meaning, Nature, and Use of Roles 2.Early Influences on the Formation of Identity and Assumption of Roles 3.Life Stages and Changes in Identity and Roles 4.Teen Years: The Crucible for Crises and Transformations in Identity and Self-concept 5.The Constructive Use of Roles in Juvenile Correctional Institutions 6.Identity Conflicts Across Gender, Body Type, Race, and Age 7.Re-learning Gender Roles When Assuming Institutional Roles 8.Problems in the Correctional-Therapeutic Use of Roles in Institutional Programs 9.Existential Conflicts Produced By Identity Crises Across Life Stages 10.Transfer of Program Adopted Role Behaviors to the Home Community

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INTRODUCTION TO THE MEANING, NATURE, AND USE OF ROLES

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PROLOGUE: Sensitizing Staff And Residents To The Meaning And Function Of Roles

1. Everyone has many roles. A role is a concept that we attribute to people. Few people are aware of their having a role. Most people can define ‘role’ by using an example like ‘parent’, ‘son or daughter’, ‘leader or follower’, and the like. People know about roles actors and actresses play in movies and plays. Most people know when children are ‘play-acting’ the role from some child’s book. Most people know when a person is playing a role ‘for real’ versus ‘pretending’. They know when a person is performing their job as, for instance, a policeman versus playing like they are a policeman. The word role is loosely applied to both cases. People seldom make fine distinctions between uses of the word ‘role’.

2. As an analytical concept, roles can be divided into many subtle and fine distinctions. The rationale for doing this is that, when one understands and can observe these distinct types of roles and how they affect human behavior, the concept can be applied within the framework of structural analysis to redesign environments and programs so as to fade out negative ‘role-associated’ behaviors and shape positive ‘role-associated’ behaviors.

3. Therefore, the first purpose of this slide presentation on roles is to educate institutional staff about the nature of roles and how the institution unwittingly or by design shapes the kinds of roles residents take in the institution. 4. The second purpose of these slides, but primary purpose in the program, is to train staff in the art of restructuring aspects of the structures and systems of the institution so as to create new roles that elicit positive ‘role-associated’ behaviors.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR LESSON 1: The Meaning, Nature, and Use of Roles

This Consideration of Roles Involves the Following Concepts: Role Definitions and Characteristics: 1.

Expectancies and Experiences 2.

3.

4.

Formal and Informal Roles A Role as a Function of its Complements Assumption, Learning, and Enactment of Roles Role Dynamics and Processes: 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Aspects of Structures and Roles: Degrees of Structure and Purpose Reveal the Differences between Role Behaviors and the Private Person.

Identities, Styles, and Being Versus Having a Role Incorporating Roles and Behavioral Repertoires Contrasting Roles in Institutions, Home Community Organizations, Peer Groups, and Families Formal Roles and the Unconscious Incorporation of Implicit Peers and Implicit Surrogate Parents in the Well-Structured Institution Use of Roles in the External Structures of the Program 10. Using Concepts of Role Assumption in Orientation and Psycho-educational Groups with New Residents 11. Using Concepts of Internalization of Roles in Psycho-educational Groups for Post-release Preparation

Copyright, Ed Young, July 2002 5

Beginning Exercise: As a Form of Brainstorming, Try to Suggest Examples of Roles or Role Names

1. Examples of actual, current roles: 1. Suggest names of some roles a Juvenile Corrections Officer, or Dorm Parent, may take as they perform their job.

2. Suggest names of some roles you have observed residents taking in various settings in the institution.

2. Examples of new roles that could be taken: 1. Suggest names of some new, different roles Juvenile Corrections Officers could take now or if some changes were made in the institution.

2. Suggest names of some new, different roles residents could take now or if some changes were made in the institution.

3. Consider the significance of a role:

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1. What impact do you think having one of these roles might have on a resident ’s personality?

2. How might it affect the resident ’s identity?

3. Try to describe how a resident ’s identity might evolve while in Stars and Stripes?

Copyright, Ed Young, July 2002 6

1. The Meaning of a Role: Expectancies and Experiences

1. EXPECTATIONS: When a person has a role and is enacting the role, he/she intuitively or unconsciously knows what others expect of the role, or, rather, what they expect of him/her in that role and enacting that role.

‘They’ know and the role occupant knows, sometimes vaguely and sometimes precisely, when the behavior is inconsistent with the role. So, it is clear that roles entail behavioral expectations.

2. EXPERIENCES: Similarly, when in a role, a person has certain feelings and experiences. A person in the leader role feels differently from a person in a follower role, or in other roles like charmer, enforcer, mouthpiece, gofer, or scapegoat role, etc.

Even if the feelings are highly unpleasant, the occupant of a role will attempt to carry out the behavioral expectations held by the group or, rather, the network of role occupants in his/her group.

Not fulfilling expectations brings unwanted pressures from the other group members.

Each member of a group has their own intuitive conception of what it must feel like to be the occupant of the other types of roles.

3. PARCELING, INSTABILITY, AND FLUCTUATIONS IN ROLES: leads to a perpetual testing and sounding out members Each role occupant knows that roles are tenuously held and an effort must be made to maintain the role.

The feelings associated with roles are also tied to the relative rank attributed to the role. Therefore, there is usually a subtle jockeying for a particular position, for the more enviable roles, or to get out of the less enviable roles. This sub-rosa jockeying for position creates and maintains a subtle distrust and tension in the group. This ’ loyalty to the status quo of the role structure and the stability of the group.

4. DISORGANIZATION AND RECOVERY OF ROLE NETWORKS: life can generate considerable anxiety among its members.

If something happens that necessitates a redistribution of roles, this jockeying becomes more obvious. With role reassignments, the occupants of the new roles must quickly adapt to the new set of behavioral expectations and re-establish stability in the group. This phase in group

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2. Formal and Informal Roles

1. Formal roles, broadly speaking, are those that result from birth such as son or daughter, or in the case of adults those such as grandparent, uncle, and the like. Also from birth is one ’s gender role or sex role which is either male of female. There are institutionally defined roles such as student, teacher, football player, student council member, Judge, Social Worker, Salesman, Governor, Clerk, Priest, Administrator, and the like. There are non-institutional, legally defined roles such as husband or wife, guardian, step parent, and the like. 2. Informal roles are those that develop out of, typically, informal interactions between two or more people. Organizations have both formal and informal roles. In a corporation an employee could be a supervisor and morale builder, confidant or any other of a wide variety of informal roles. A boy and girl could be sweethearts or lovers. A teenage peer group could have a leader, a gofer, a goat, a jokester, and so forth. A student council could have the formal roles of chairperson and secretary and the secretary could be a wheeler-dealer while the chairperson could be a confidence builder and motivator, and yet another member could be a manipulator and instigator, and someone else could be an advocate and protector of the underdog. These informal roles are partly elicited by the type of authorization and supervision of the group and the structures within which the group functions, partly determined by the setting within which the group ’s meetings take place, partly shaped by the needs created by the group ’s purpose, partly influenced by rival groups, partly influenced and constrained by the composition of the group and the reputations they bring with them to the group, and possibly many other factors.

3. Informal roles can be ascertained by careful observation over an extended period of time. Often observations will discover that many persons can play a variety of roles. Two people in a group seldom play the same role without rivalry and conflict developing. When a group is in its beginning stages, informal roles are gradually assigned based on the needs of the group and the attributes individuals display in the group. Typically informal roles go through a period of re-allocation until the most well-functioning combination is worked out. Jockeying for position is common and often results in bitter spats during which someone in the group usually arises to mediate or resolve. This early period is often quite stressful for many members. This process applies to groups of two such as sweethearts or pals as well as groups of a wide variety of sizes.

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3. A Role As A Function Of Its Complements

1. Theoretically, no role exists in isolation. Each role exists in relation to at least one other role occupied by another person.

Most roles exist in relation to a number of other persons and their roles. Behavior in a role is to a great extent determined by each role in a complement. That is to say, to take a general example, role A and role B interact with one another in ways that are exclusive or that, typically, neither plays with others. Furthermore, in a complement, role B can not be played unless someone plays role A with them. For example, if someone has to be the dispatcher, someone else has to play the gofer, or someone must play the masochist for the other to play the sadist, and vice versa. A person can have a mood or emotion by themselves, but they cannot play out a role behavior by themselves without experiencing the absurdity of doing so. Playing a role in front of a mirror may be alright for practice but not for real. Roles can be, and usually are, specific to Settings. For example, a gofer for contraband would not get orders from a dispatcher where they can be publicly observed by outsiders, as the essence of dispatcher to gofer is secrecy. Only the most audacious sadist would enact that role with their masochist at a social gathering or church, for example, as the essence of this interaction is the misery, helplessness, and lack of recourse of the masochist. Some roles, on the other hand, are only valid when recognized by everyone in an organization, institution, or non-institutional group. For example, a matriarch of a large family may play the perpetual, insufferable, unmerciful tyrant to everyone else in the family and uses the public nature of this role to terrify those who are not the target so as to let them know that any defiance or disobedience on their part will be met with the same cruel, demanding, iron fist. Some roles in families can be specific to a single relationship with another family member. The parent who is a denigrator will often only denigrate only one other member of the family. One person, therefore, can occupy many informal roles and many types of informal roles, but each is always enacted with a complementary role. 2. How complements operate: Complementary roles may be designated by a word or a few synonyms. Confidence that one can rely on the other fulfilling their complementary role is reaffirmed by calling them by their name for the role or synonymous names periodically. It has been emphasized that roles consist of a set of behaviors, but it is also the case that language interaction is specific to complementary roles. For instance, if a leader has a number of different complementary roles and role inhabitants in his group, the language the leader uses with each will have obvious differences to a trained ear but the differences can sometimes be subtle and only recognized by nuances or inflections. A subtle change in the latter can result is inflammatory accusations or even disruption of role relationships. Most people are finely attuned to such subtle changes in nuance and inflection and, as in this case, the leader has to be a master actor to successfully carry out subterfuge without detection while presiding over the smooth operation of the group. The language and the behavior of each side of the complementary relationship are both important but other things such as body language, relative value of assigned tasks, amount of time spent with the person and where time is spent with them all have to be juggled and carefully orchestrated for the leader to maintain his position and the success of his group. The leader knows the complement is sensitively listening and watching. He may try to overcome deficiencies in skill with force, but this inevitably leaves him vulnerable to lack of optimal cooperation.

3. Consequently, the activation of one side of a complementary role dyad can be brought about by creating a role and then altercasting for the right person or persons to fill its complement. Inactivation can be brought about by making it impossible for the person or persons occupying the complement to perform the complementary behavior. Inactivation is most effective when either expressing a type of behavior that is impervious to the attempts of the other to elicit the required behavior and/or exhibits an alternate behavior or, better still, exhibits a radically opposite kind of behavior. Occasionally roles amenable to switching can be switched. If one person switches, the other may or may not switch. Intelligent management of changes in destructive complementary roles is difficult and requires creativity and persistence.

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4. Assumption, Learning, and Enactment of Formal Roles

1. If a youth in an institution takes or is given a formal role it is usually by vote, achievement, or assignment, although in some cases a role can also be selected from available options. 2. The youth may have wanted the role. When he assumes the role, he finds he does not know how to perform it. 3. On the other hand, he may not have wanted that role or may have been ambivalent about it.

4. Successful performance of most roles is dependent upon other people performing their roles in the prescribed complementary way. 5. Therefore, assuming the formal role title does not mean the youth will automatically perform the role appropriately. 6. An adult leader, or maturity coach, who is sensitized to the nature of roles will notice the problem and can, then, let the youth talk about their role assumption problems. 7. If the problem is a lack of knowledge, the maturity coach can assist him with learning the necessary behavior and put him at ease with respect to feelings accompanying his inexperience. 8. If the group is not responding appropriately, the maturity coach can encourage the group to talk about their feelings and reasons for lack of responsiveness. 9. The youth may have conscious or unconscious negative feelings about the role and the maturity coach may encourage him to open up and talk about those feelings and why he may have them.

10.Having a role means the group has expectations for role specific behaviors. These expectations may have been formed by the previous role inhabitants. The group may make invidious comparisons between the current and previous role inhabitants. The maturity coach may have to open the group up to discussing this and helping them accept that the new role inhabitant needs patience and cooperation, time to become proficient in his role enactment skills, and time to become comfortable in the role. 11. The maturity coach is assisting both the new role inhabitant and the group members in learning how to promote mutual facilitation of both the role inhabitant and the group, or those in complementary roles, so that the group as a whole can gradually begin to have a successful group and an optimal experience.

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5. Aspects of Structures and Roles:

Degrees of Structure and Clarity of Purpose Reveal the Differences between Formal Role Behaviors and the Private Person.

1. In a minimally structured setting, where there is no formal role system, there should be little differentiation of roles. The informal roles that emerge should be determined, for the most part, by inner, personally preferred behavioral patterns and self-concept.

2. In this type of setting, if the purpose is not known and the participants are simply there, the inner factor will predominate and the roles will be undifferentiated and inconstant.

3. If the purpose is individualized so that it is a matter of each person ’s goals rather than a collective goal, the inner factor should predominate but temporary roles such as helpee and helper could fade in and out and alternate, or a person could evolve a role like insensitive self-server.

4. If the purpose is as described above except that each participant has to pursue goals that are for a scarce resource or all are pursuing the same goal that only one can attain, distinct, but nevertheless fluid, informal roles can emerge. The primary role would be for each to be a rival or competitor and the role behaviors could require deception, conspiring, sabotage, aggression, manipulation, bargaining, being suppliant, playing suffering or helpless fatality, and the like. These behaviors could crystallize into persisting informal roles.

5. Whatever roles develop in these types of minimally structured settings, their source will primarily be long-standing inner preferences and persistent habit patterns.

6. This being the case, unless there is some overseer with the prerogative to judge and manage what is going on, the unvarnished, private person is likely to emerge.

7. As soon as an increased level of structure with formal roles and clarity of purpose is introduced, each person ’s public persona will emerge followed by the assumption of the pre-scribed roles. The private person and inner preferences and tendencies will submerge.

8. In this light, it becomes clear how formal, as well as some informal, role performances and private personality characteristics are distinct from one another.

9. If left to the minimally structured settings, youths will remain unsocialized at the mercy of their primitive, antisocial pleasure and power drives.

10.Therefore, it is obvious that for relatively unsocialized youth, dominated by primitive antisocial impulses, to learn civilized behavior and incorporate civilized values, there must be a consistently structured, civilized program and settings with a network of formal roles that require socially mature behaviors and an incentive systems that motivates incorporation of these behaviors and associated values.

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6. Identities, Styles, and Being versus Having a Role

1. Identities are distinct from roles.

2. Identities are similar to roles in that they are both social and sustained by a social network.

3. Identities are public while self-concept is its loosely related, private counterpart.

4. Identities are recognized and expected across organizations, settings, and situations just as roles are.

5. Settings and situations call for variations in identities called ‘Situational Identities’. Situational identities are the outcome of the combination of a person ’s unique ‘style’ characteristics and the role expectations specific to the assemblage of roles in an organization and, in most cases, its settings. These style characteristics are an expression of the person ’s public, versus private, personality.

6. Each person assumes a wide variety of roles, identities, and situational identities. As a person changes roles, their behavior changes to meet the role expectations. Therefore, the person takes on and sheds roles in a manner analogous to cloths. Identities are more persistent and even endure long after a person has radically changed their personality and behavior since identities reside primarily in the minds of other people. Roles, on the other hand, reside primarily in characteristics and needs of the organization. Theoretically, anyone should be able to assume, or take over, any role, irrespective of the adequacy of their performance of the role expectations, yet this is not true of identities.

7. Consequently one can take, have, or inhabit, a role but one ‘is’ their identity and no one else can assume it or take it over even though two identities may be more or less similar.

8. The behavioral expectations for identities and roles may conflict. A person may enter an organization and be assigned or asked to assume a role that requires that they perform in a way that in is conflict with their, heretofore, identity, or, on a deeper level, conflict with their self-concept. Some people are able to easily adapt to such conflicting requirements and some find this emotionally disturbing. For the latter it may be like running up against a psychological barricade or transgressing a social taboo to assume roles that conflict with their identity. The problem may be either with their identity and their need to perform what the role pro-scribes or impossibility of performing what the role pre-scribes. 9. If there is no viable choice and they have to assume the role and its behaviors in spite of the conflict with their identity, they may perform in a perfunctory, minimal manner while for others, since their heart is not in it and they feel violated, they may perform so inadequately or inappropriately as to bring extreme ridicule, criticism, and even punishment upon themselves all the while, inside, they are feeling depressed, enraged, or victimized. It does not help these latter kinds of persons to explain to them that assuming and performing the role does not have to mean that they are ‘becoming’ that kind of person. In other words pointing out the difference between having and being a role does not resolve their difficulty or reduce their emotional distress, while for others the concept of ‘being versus having’ allows them to comfortably accept the difference or conflict.

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7. Incorporating Roles and Behavioral Repertoires

1. When a youth enters the institution, all he brings with him with regard to roles, identity, and self-concept is his self concept. He may have preferences for types of roles and for his previous identity, but he knows he has no prerogative entitling him to them. If he enters an institution with a minimum of structure, he may try to get the other youths to accept his old identity and he may try to play old, preferred roles, but he soon learns that he is a the whims of the new group and may quickly be put down or forcefully challenged. He is very unlikely to win. 2. Uncertainty is the rule where there is minimal structure. The uncertainly itself is not only highly disconcerting, but also the fact that the whole process of informal role assignment is even more chaotic than when he first began to enter a peer group or form a gang in his early teens. There are no alliances he can fall back on. Anxiety and insecurity can escalate. Rivalry and testing become intense and there are no power leverages at his disposal. It is a raw struggle and the slightest shift in fragile, tentative alliances, or betrayal of tenuous agreements for support, can result in a eruption of rage.

3. Eventually his informal role in some group begins to take shape. However, as it does, and identification with a group is recognized, he probably finds that his informal role is only partly defined by his new group. In institutions with minimal structure, residents pair off into rival groups. Consequently his role and identity is to a great extent defined in opposition to the other group. His role or roles are shaped by the opposition. This means that loyalty to his group and antagonism to the out-group is primary. The in-group formulates its rules, its informal roles, and each individual ’s identity and situational identities. A major component of each other factors, therefore, is ‘opposition’ and opposition needs power and the capacity to intimidate is of highest priority.

4. Living in close quarters with rival groups in an unstructured institution is much more intense and stressful because there is no safe haven away from each other. Crowding and close approximation to rivals in such settings is itself incendiary. Therefore, the roles are fiercely incorporated and the behavioral repertoires must be mastered to perfection. Furthermore, what are they incorporating in terms of roles, identities, and behavioral repertoires if not a much more negative version of what these were in his home community? 5. What is the alternative? The only viable alternative is for the institution to develop a program that is structured and that provides formal roles for everyone which prevent polarization into rival groups and are integrated into a mutually supportive, healthy community with appealing incentives to incorporate the new, formal roles and their positive behavioral repertoires. 6. In such a positively structured program, uncertainty about roles and identities is eliminated. All of the anxiety, insecurity, and potential rage reactions common to minimal structure are eliminated. When a role is assigned or achieved and is publicly proclaimed, everyone recognizes the role and expects the related behaviors. When there are positive incentives for role achievement and enactment and when performance of role behaviors is met with respect and admiration, then self-esteem increases and the youth experiences such satisfying inner rewards that they begin to develop a strong identification with the role and their evolving identity. They also begin to develop a strong identification with the institution that is making this possible. 7. In a structure such as this the roles and role behaviors are deeply incorporated and, gradually, the accompanying identity becomes accepted so that it is eventually, inwardly, transformed into a prized self-concept which supplants his former negative self-concept that had developed in his home community and that he brought with him as he entered the institution.

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8. Contrasting Roles in Institutions, Home Community Organizations, Peer Groups, and Families

1. Roles in institutions with minimal structure and an institution with a ‘Stars and Stripes’ program can be contrasted with roles in home community peer groups, families, and home community organizations like school, athletics, and church.

1.In the first place, youth in almost any organization in the home community are supervised to some degree by adults. Schools, of course are highly structured and have almost constant adult supervision. Schools generally have mandatory attendance up to the age of sixteen. Some few students, of course, are expelled from school. Attendance at any type of church program, and most other community based organizations, is voluntary and therefore have to provide a strong incentive for youths to attend. Such programs generally have adult supervision. In contrast, peer groups or gangs run free with no adult supervision and with time that is free of any other kind of responsibilities. Schools provide many roles for youth. In addition to the role of student, schools provide many extracurricular programs like sports, music, academic clubs, student government, and job assignments such as delivering notes and filing papers. Most of these programs structure time after school with adult supervision. The problem is that none of these organizations or programs include one hundred per cent of the youth in the program. Usually only a small percentage of youths have the opportunity to participate in such programs. Consequently, formal roles in such programs are open only to an exclusive minority. The role of student shapes only behavior related to academics. This means that the majority of youth have no avenues for learning and incorporating socially positive role behaviors. They are either in the presence of adults and exhibiting their public personality or they are running free. The thing to note about all such organizations is that adult supervision means the youth will display their public personalities. Yet, even those roles in schools are designed for learning only the bare minimum of pro-social role behaviors. The identity of those not having such privileged roles is that of ‘reject’. Those students who do poorly in school academics acquire the identity of reject or failure there also.

2.The structure of home community organizations is such that many youth have no avenue through which they can learn pro-social behaviors and, in addition, many of these youths are acquiring a and no roles in any system, these antisocial behaviors that fit well the ‘reject’ identity. Youths who fit this description, and there are many, are left floating free in their home community. They turn to peers and form gangs and run free and act out their identity as reject. With no adult supervision ‘rejects’ are motivated by their primitive, unsocialized impulses. Forming gangs, they develop informal roles that are partly shaped by the fact that they almost always have rival gangs. The group develops roles that are designed for the pursuit of antisocial goals and to intimidate the rival gang. This lack of structure opens the way for the development of negative roles with ‘reject’ identity. Having such an identity and orientation to the world, they have nothing to lose by failing and committing antisocial acts and being arrested by police. They have everything to gain by being successfully intimidating and committing crimes that fulfill a need to express their resentment toward the world and flaunt the world ’s emphasis on consequences. Their motto could be: “No one cares for us, everyone looks down on us, we don’t care about anyone else, we don’t care for ourselves as individuals, we care only for the gang ”. Pleasure, power, and loyalty are the prime values of the gang. These are the role behaviors the structure of their world leaves them to learn.

2. Roles in the families of most of these youths prepare them well for adopting their role in the gang and adopting the motto expressed above. A large percentage of the homes of these youths are fragmented and highly dysfunctional. For some, the dysfunctional, single parent that they are left with finds a new mate that escalates the calamitous nature of the home environment. Now, we are adding to the above a structure of a home environment that has such a negative impact on the youth and this may result in possibly assigning him an even more pathological role in the family system which generates such increased resentment, turmoil, and rage that he is made into an even more ideal candidate for the socially destructive life of the gang.

3. The structure of a juvenile institution with a program like “Stars and Stripes” offers everything that was missing from community organizations and the family and countermeasures to everything that was amiss in those environments.

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9. Formal Roles and the Unconscious Incorporation of Implicit Peers and Implicit Surrogate Parents in the Well-Structured Institution

1. Adolescent youths running free in the home community typically join gangs and informal roles develop in these gangs. As a result of a multiplicity of structural factors, these informal roles take on an antisocial character. The antisocial nature of the gang and the unique role or roles the youth has in the gang are unconsciously incorporated into the youth’s mind and exert a controlling influence on him wherever he is or goes. This incorporated, implicit gang will be called the secondary implicit other or implicit peer group. It is called secondary because parents are incorporated and become implicit parents prior to the incorporation of the peer group. The roles played as a child in the family eventually came to form the youth’s identity. When the youth enters the gang, that primary implicit other is still there exerting an influence, however, the rewards of being in the gang far outweigh those from the family, school, or other community organization. The gang becomes the new ‘virtual’ family. This implicit gang shapes the youth’s identity in such a way that it submerges the implicit parents. The implicit parents are still there exerting their influence, particularly negative influence, but it has lost its former hold and is submerged. It significance now is that it was one of the major forces directing him to join and identify with the gang. Supplanting the implicit parents’ preeminence is not without residual pain as the youth feels the way in which the gang now supplies an acceptance, protection, and a valued role which the youth had never known with the family. This reminds him of the pain of deprivation mistreatment he experienced at the hands of the family. Now the gang makes up for that. The new identity in the gang has more positive than negative features to his mine. Even though the tradeoff may be rejection from outsiders and the occasional risk of danger, he finds it to be unquestionably worth it and therefore deserving of his loyalty. He belongs! At this adolescent transitional stage of life the youth’s personality is extremely malleable. He is open to learning new behaviors and is extremely grateful to the gang as teacher or coach in the arts of becoming an adult as defined by the group. He learns these behaviors well because he is intensely, positively motivated to do so. He incorporates the knowledge imparted, the view of the world, the values, the ‘group’ feelings, the approved behaviors, a dress code that identifies the gang, and the symbols like secret code words or hand gestures or shakes or hats that identify the group. All of these can fit into this new evolving identity. This is now who he is and he values this identity and values his gang almost more than his own life.

2. When such a youth enters the institution, he enters still being in the middle of this stage of openness to incorporation. The negative implicit parents are still firmly entrenched and feeding his anti-establishment attitudes. The loyalty to his gang and the powerful influence of the implicit gang are in full force. Entering in this state, the institution has a formidable task if it wants to turn the youth around to a mature, pro-social life with character and embracing the values of the larger society. In order to accomplish this formidable challenge, the institution must have a program that is powerful and appealing enough to supplant the negative implicit parents on the one hand and the implicit gang on the other. Furthermore, this program must be able to win the competition from these forces by supplying program features that include everything the parents did not give him, everything that can counter the negative parental influence, and everything that can counter the negative gang influence and supply what was missing. This means the institution must supply positive surrogate parents that relate to him in such a way that he can strongly bond with them and incorporate them and have them take the place of or supplant the prior negative implicit parents. It means that the institution must supply a new, positive, supportive, protective peer group, an incentive to identify with the institution, a new set of values for which he receives acknowledgement and opens the way to valued privileges, a way to achieve new and valued formal roles that involve publicly valued behaviors and that give him status throughout the institution, a new valued dress code, new symbols signifying belonging to a valued group, coaching from an admired adult male on how to become successful as an adult man, and finally, activities that are challenging and fun.

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10. Using Concepts of Role Assumption in Orientation and in Psycho-educational Groups with New Residents

1. Consider the attitude an adjudicated youth might have as he enters the juvenile institution. He would likely have an immediate distrust and antagonism along with a determination not to let the institution change him. His loyalty to his group remains primary and he vows not to give that up. His anti-establishment becomes even more entrenched. Demonstrating resistance to staff will be a sign of his strength, yet he walks the fine balance of acting out his hostility while avoiding being caught and suffering even more harsh punishment if he is caught. To accomplish this balance he prepares himself to use his best skills of deception. He is now alone and without the protection of his gang. He is probably immediately thinking about how he could escape. He wonders what might happen at the hands of both staff and residents and how he can survive until he can get out.

2. Knowing that this is the likely attitude of the new arrival, how shall the staff approach him and how can the program be designed to deal with such alienation, deception, and intransigence? If a staff member gathers the Student Government Presidents and/or Stars to meet with the newcomers and the staff lets these upper level residents, who have status and respect, take the lead and explain the basics of the program and takes the newcomers on a brief tour, part of their armor will immediately begin to melt, their curiosity will be piqued, and fear of the unknown reduced. When he is introduced to the upper level resident who is going to be his mentor and responsible for orienting him during his period as a Greenhorn and who is to make sure he achieves the rank of Stripe 1, he should begin to move toward a bonding with this resident and begin to feel a little bit of security, replacing his anxiety.

3. After gaining a small degree of his trust, the staff can conduct a Psycho-educational group with both Mentors and Greenhorns present. In this group, the staff can elicit the feelings of the Greenhorns and listen non-judgmentally and empathetically. As the process is underway, the staff can encourage the Mentors to explain more about how the program works and talk about their own experiences as they have moved up the ranks and taken different responsible roles. As this interaction continues and the youth sees the status and respect their Mentors have, they will automatically begin to get a ‘feel’ for what it means to assume a role. They will be assured that they will have maximum support from both residents and staff as they work to achieve advances in ranks and thereby reducing fear of failure and performance anxiety. 4. As they leave this session and when they attend a Student Government meeting, they will be seeing that such achievements of rank come with identifying cloths and insignia. They will experience the feeling of acceptance and protection in this new peer group. By the time of their first meeting with a Support Team with staff who will become like surrogate parents, most of them will be eager to work to achieve the rank of Stripe 1 and assume the roles appropriate to that rank. They will know that this new peer group will be uniformly supportive and there will be no dangerous tests and no put downs for failure to achieve stated goals. No one will ridicule, exclude, or reject them. No one will try to beat them out of a role. They will feel they can finally relax. They will see the pride of those residents of higher rank as they enact their responsible roles with the appropriate authoritative demeanor. Consequently, these upper level residents will begin to be taken as models and these youths will begin to aspire to assume those same roles some day.

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11. Using Concepts of Internalization of Roles in Psycho-educational Groups for Post-release Preparation

1. To enter the post-release phase of the Stars and Stripes program the youth should have attained the rank of Star. To achieve Star, the youth had to meet criteria that involved a sense of responsibility to the community as a whole a have demonstrated this through observable actions that preserved and enhanced a wholesome community life. He also had to perform roles such as mediator and president or at least one of the other offices in Student Government. He also should have demonstrated an ability to plan group projects and an ability to work cooperatively with others to accomplish the project. He should have shown an ability to train, teach, tutor, and counsel residents of lower rank. He will have performed a responsible work role. Having all of done this, the youth would have assumed many pro-social roles. In these roles, he would have met many situations not unlike those in his home community and received maturity coaching on how to handle even the most challenging situations. Having performed these roles and met these situations successfully and gained recognition in the community as a person with those qualities, it is expected that the community would have formed an identity of him that included and incorporated those qualities. Hopefully this youth would also see this as his identity and even incorporated it permanently as his self-concept. In addition, he would have met with his Support Team a sufficient number of times and have experienced their care and support for him and their belief in his ability to use his own judgment maturely in decision making. He would have identified and bonded with one or more of the staff member maturity coaches as a model for his gender identity, or what it means to be a man. The goal of the program for him is that he incorporate all of this so deeply that he will continue to be that way and retain that self-concept and identity when he returns to the home community.

2. The main purpose of the Post-release Psycho-education group is to assist the youth in projecting ahead and recalling what the home community is like, his old gang was like, his experience in school and other organizations was like, and what his family was like. As he projects ahead with these memories in mind, the Post-release group can help him anticipate what challenges he will face and help him formulate alternate plans for dealing with these challenges. Together, they can imagine facing actual situations and discuss how to handle them. They could also role-play such situations so that he can practice the actual behaviors to use in these situations. If he has deeply internalized all of the required roles and incorporated his peer group and surrogate parents, he should be able to spontaneously enact behaviors that should be effective in handling these future situations. When he demonstrates that he can do this and does so with assurance and confidence, then the staff know that he is as ready as the institution can prepare him to be to face return to his home community.

4/30/2020 17 Copyright, Ed Young, July 2002

SUMMARY

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There is always dialectical tension between the individual and society. The pendulum swings. Sometimes the individual predominates and, when taken too far in a weak social structure, widespread social dysfunction results and the individuals suffer from unbridled instincts of each preying on the other. Sometimes the structure of society predominates and the individuals suffer from rigid, inhumane social systems. One part of a society may have a weakening social structure and a social program develops to cope with harm individuals are inflicting on one another. Individuals are placed in the social program that is especially designed to impose rigid controls. These swings in the pendulum are presided over by administrators who have little or no understanding of the relationship between broad trends of the two sides of the dialectical tension in the culture. Therefore, the trends are cyclical like the extremes of the pendulum.

This phenomenon is evident in juvenile justice and criminal justice in general. The pendulum has swung far toward rigid, oppressive control of the offenders arising in the our loose and unenlightened social structure. The ‘Stars and Stripes’ program is designed as a corrective to this trend that attempts to find a synthesis or middle ground with a moderate, constructive structure designed to supply what is missing in the poorly structured larger society and to counteract the negative effects of individuals preying upon each other.

This lesson addressed an aspect of structure that is pivotal in the relationship of external structures to the internal processes of the individual. That pivotal aspect, or fulcrum, is the formal social role. The larger society has been blind to negative effects of the neglected social role. Formal roles have been exclusively used for the privileged in society. By neglecting the provision of positive, social roles for all of its youth, a dangerously increasing number of our youth have had no avenue open to them for the systematic cultivation of character, values, and civilized behavior. These youths, being out of the ‘system’s’ purview, have been regarded and treated impersonally, have had no socially acceptable avenues for achievement, have had no incentives to learn civilized values and behavior, have had no incentives or rewards to encourage conformity and productivity, and have received punishments and expulsion instead, and have been left to grow up in totally dis or un organized ghettos. As a result, a lawless, predatory youth culture of rival, anti-establishment gangs have flourished.

Stars and Stripes uses the concept of formal social roles as a means of facilitating the youths growth in maturity and character by providing roles for everyone, giving them personal care and recognition, providing avenues for achievement, providing incentives and rewards for achievement, providing an organized community for which they are personally responsible and with which they can identify, and surrogate parents and maturity coaches with whom they can identify and model after and who take care and patience to assist them to learn to use their own judgment responsibly.

As there is a network of roles in Stars and Stripes, each resident ’s role become a means through which they can learn to be mutually supportive from the moment they enter the institution, through progression up the ranks of Stars and Stripes and through to their transition back to their home community.

The role is the fulcrum that maintains a proper balance between the two sides of the dialectical tension.

4/30/2020 18 Copyright, Ed Young, July 2002

EXERCISES FOR THE MEANING AND NATURE OF ROLES

1. Select one youth from each rank in Stars and Stripes from Greenhorn through Star. Observe and study their behavior. Describe how the youth in each rank behaves to see if you can detect differences. Characterize the principal ways in which the youths differ as their rank increases.

2. Try to recall the way youth behaved at HCYV before Stars and Stripes or the way youth behave in another similar institution with which you are familiar. Make a global description of how youth in these settings differ. What function do you think roles play in accounting for these differences?

3. Take one youth with whom you are very familiar and describe how the assumption of a higher rank and the roles that go with that rank may have changed the youth. How may these roles have changed his values? How may they have changed his relationships to other youths, to staff, to the institution? How may they have changed his identity?

4. How do you personally feel about the youth selected in exercise 3?

5. Have you had an opportunity to act as a maturity coach with a youth? If so, what was he concerned about and how did you coach him? Do you feel that his degree of responsiveness might have resulted from the level of his rank? If so, why do you think this?

6. Do you feel the youth in Stars and Stripes have a better chance to succeed after returning to their home community? If so, why?

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MOVIES FOR THE MEANING AND NATURE OF ROLES

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