"Plockar man bort en, lägger sig de andra" - En studie om beteendesmitta på låsbar institution

Sammanfattning: Author: Linn Billsten Palmberg, Annie Steffert Title: “Plockar man bort en, lägger sig de andra” – En studie om beteendesmitta på låsbar institution Supervisor: Jonas Ringström Assessor: Lars Harrysson Every year, around 1300 children and young people are placed in one of SiS special youth institutions in Sweden because of drug addiction, criminality and destructive behavior. These institutions have been criticized by Levin (1997) among others, because the treatment results are often disappointing and may in many cases lead to worsening problems among adolescents. The aim of this study was to examine how negative behavior can occur and be “contagious” among girls who are given compulsory care in a SiS youth institution. We also wanted to investigate whether there were also positive behavioral contagion and how these processes could look like. To ascertain this, we did a qualitative study consisting of six semi-structured interviews in three different departments of SiS, where we asked the staff to talk about how they perceive the process and what they think may affect the girls' behavior. We concluded that the institution is in itself a great source of infection, while staff have an important role in preventing negative contagious behavior, and facilitate positive contagious behavior. We also came to the conclusion that the staff had much easier to describe negative contagious behavior than positive contagious behavior. Negative behavior caused by contagion seemed likely to persist over time, even after the stay, while positive behavioral contagion among the girls seemed to consist only during their stay at the institution. To understand the results we came up with, we used Erving Goffman's theory of total institutions and the dramaturgical perspective in our analysis.