Rättigheter som ”token”, egenansvar och egenvärde : Barn och ungas förståelse av rättigheter i låst institutionsvård

In Sweden, the recent debate on youth crime has focused on strengthening repressive measures. At the same time, government work is underway to strengthen children’s rights. Young people who are placed for the purpose of care in secure youth care (locked institutions) are placed at the intersection of these two trends. Starting from a critical children’s rights perspective, we explore how young people understand rights in a secure care environment and discuss how these understandings relates to central principals, laws and conventions. We start from the concrete situations and contexts in which rights are to be realized in order to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of rights in a secure care environment. The empirical data consists of 15 youth interviews, at four institutions. Three understandings of rights are identified; rights as tokens where rights are seen as something symbolic and without meaning, rights as self-responsibility where rights are seen as conditional on the young people’s actions and, rights as fundamental value where rights are understood as respect for one’s own and others’ human dignity, regardless of their actions. The three understandings of rights can be linked to different care contexts and to the relationship between staff and young people. Taken together, the young people’s understandings highlight the importance of basic principles of dignity and respect on equal terms, as well as the right of children deprived of their liberty to be helped to reintegrate into society. Implications for the operation of secure youth care are highlighted