Linn County Juvenile Detention and Diversion Services (JDDS) were established to provide detention, monitoring, and rehabilitation services to adolescents who have committed crimes and have been placed on probation. I have spent the last two years working for JDDS as a Tracker. As a Tracker, my job is to be a consequence, to insert myself in the lives of youths in an attempt to control and correct delinquency, while the adolescents struggle with exerting control over their development into adulthood. 

When youths are ordered to complete probation, they are asked to comply with many expectations which may include: electronic monitoring, drug screening, completing therapies, and community service. Spending an abundance of time with them, I have observed the environment of discord that develops between the adolescent and service providers as well as between the system and outcomes. The service providers involved have the best intentions in mind for the youth, but often the youths feel that they have done nothing wrong, are victims of circumstance, or sometimes do not fully understand themselves why they have committed a crime. The system has been put in place to provide rehabilitation, but it is not a straightforward process and there are often relapses and recidivism, some of the youths spending a majority of their adolescence with a level of involvement in the juvenile justice system. 

Through the use of anonymous portraiture, visiting locations where they have committed crimes, and reflections of the youths,Corrections serves as an appraisal of their experiences in the juvenile justice system in an attempt to gain an understanding of how the broader concepts of control and privacy affects their rehabilitation and development.

Bio
Zora J Murff is a photography student at the University of Iowa currently pursuing his BA. Zora has an educational background in human services and his work focuses on experiences of youths involved in the juvenile criminal justice system. He was a 2014 finalist for Photolucida's Critical Mass as well as a recipient of the Midwest Society for Photographic Education's 2014 Conference Travel Scholarship. Zora's work has been featured online on Wired Magazine's Raw File, Prison Photograph, Feature Shoot, Aint-Bad Magazine, and was recently published in PDN's Emerging Photographer Magazine. A portfolio of his work from his series, "Corrections", is a part of the Midwest Photographers Project, a print collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Zora currently resides and works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

For more information, please contact Zora J Murff at: zora.murff@me.com or visit: www.zora-murff.com Interview with Zora J Murff here