The paradox of helping - how welfare professionals want to make a difference for crime-prone young people.

This paper concerns welfare work with crime prone young people. It focuses on the relation between welfare professionals and crime prone young people and examines how this relation is a remedial social relation that (re)produces and maintains asymmetrical roles – despite the welfare professionals’ good intentions. It is a relation where the welfare professionals have the power to identify needs and intervene with help and the young person is shaped as someone who needs this help. The paper focus on how welfare professionals such as teachers, pedagogues, youth workers and the police describe and differentiate between young people at risk (who need support and help) and young people who pose a danger to others (who only understand consequences). In this way the presentation is a contribution to understanding welfare professional categorical work as part of shaping target groups.

I draw on concepts from Georg Simmel, Tess Lea and Lauren Berlant to understand how welfare work with marginalized young people works. Furthermore, I am inspired by Jacques Donzelot and Harvey Sacks to understand the workings of categories and differentiations.

Empirically the presentation is based on two research projects. A project about crime preventive work in cross professional institutional meetings in “SSP” (A corporation between School, Social work, and the Police) and a project about youth work in youth clubs in Copenhagen, Denmark. The paper is based on observations and interviews from these two projects.