CJS Seminar: Jasmina Arnež

The Crime, Justice & Society Seminar Series presents

The Youth Justice Paradox: Young Lives in the Shadows of Slovenian Penal Exceptionalism

Jasmina Arnež (University of Oxford) 

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.

Biography

 Jasmina is a Research Associate at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, and the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. Jasmina’s research focuses on youth culture, youth crime, the links between school exclusion and youth offending, and the effectiveness and fairness of responses to juvenile delinquency, focusing on understanding and preventing systemic discrimination against children. Jasmina is also interested in applying Bourdieu and critical sociology to criminology, comparative criminology, crime policy, and translating criminological theories into practice.

Jasmina graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana. After completing her M.Phil, D.Phil, and ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, Jasmina joined the Institute of Criminology Ljubljana.

In 2022, Jasmina published a monograph titled Negotiating Class in Youth Justice: Professional Practice and Interactions with Routledge Criminology & Sociology. The book explores how class shapes interactions between professionals, parents, and young people in the youth justice system. In 2023, Jasmina received the 2023 British Society of Criminology (BSC) Book Prize. You can find more information about the book here.

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