Disability advocates in the twenty-first century have frowned upon the practice of institutionalization in disability services, yet many people with intellectual disability continue to be institutionalized in other settings such as correctional facilities. The prison system is a difficult environment for people with intellectual disability to negotiate, and they may find themselves victimized, segregated and isolated with very few resources to survive the experience. Incarceration may present a temporary solution to preventing anti-social behaviour in society. However, for offenders with intellectual disability, it often fails to address their criminal behaviour or the social context from which the behaviour emanates. Policy and practice in the disability service sector needs to develop further awareness of the needs of people with intellectual disability who come into contact with the criminal justice system as offenders. Similarly, correctional systems need to expand their knowledge base on the habilitative and rehabilitative needs of prisoners with intellectual disability in order to better address the issues that may arise from their incarceration. This exploratory qualitative study gathers the life stories of ten ex-prisoners from Queensland correctional facilities who have been labelled as having an intellectual disability by the service systems they have accessed. It utilizes an interpretive, social constructionist framework to understand people’s experiences. Life stories were gathered from in-depth interviews with participants over a prolonged period of time and supplemented by contextual information provided by six practitioners from disability, mental health and ex-prisoner services. The stories of three participants with intellectual disability were analysed through the holistic lens of a narrative approach and all ten stories were analysed thematically, providing an aggregate picture of all participants’ experiences. The findings of this thesis indicate that participants in this study had personal needs to belong, to feel competent and for others to see their criminal activity as an unfortunate but very human response to difficult circumstances. These needs were not always met within the prison environment and many participants struggled to feel safe in such a context. There were many pre-prison characteristics of participants that influenced their adaptation to prison, and they were also subjected to a series of degradations such as enforced isolation, frequent strip-searching, verbal and physical assault. However, these factors were not always constructed as negative or significant experiences by participants, and were often counterbalanced by perceived benefits to prison life such as friendship, food and reprieve from community living. These constructions of their experience highlight the vulnerability of this group within the prison environment and the failure of 2 the system and broader society to address core issues for people when they returned to the community. Significant disparities were also found between the philosophies of disability service support and the correctional enterprise. This study has indicated the urgent need for cross-agency collaboration in addressing the needs of people with intellectual disability. The thesis makes a contribution to both doing research with people with intellectual disability and to understanding their experiences of incarceration. The voices of people with intellectual disability have long been overlooked in research because it was assumed they could not express their views or because researchers did not have appropriate research approaches. It is only recently that some writers have captured the viewpoints of people with intellectual disability in academic discourse, but there has been little work done with prisoners and ex-prisoners with intellectual disability. Researching the experience of imprisonment with people with intellectual disabilities also presented unique ethical and methodological challenges. This thesis covers ethical issues such as informed consent, incriminating disclosure, self-determination and veracity and bias in life story research. It also develops knowledge in this area regarding recruitment, communication practices, and dissemination of findings. Overall, the study provides a nuanced account of life inside prison for people with intellectual disability. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of inclusive research with people with impaired capacity and to criminological research in this area.

Teenage parenting is widely constructed in prevailing research and public discourse as a social problem, with poor outcomes for parent and child. Teenage parents are regarded as a drain on state funds, too young to parent well, and at high risk of social exclusion, both educationally and economically. This thesis proposes that teenage motherhood is a turning point in a young woman’s life and identity, which can be an opportunity, rather than a problem, if there is adequate support for the mother and her child. It considers the role of a New Zealand School for Teenage Parents in providing this support. Using qualitative narrative methodology, ten young women, six family members and nine other members of the School community were interviewed about their experiences of its culture and practices. Six of the young women were also interviewed to gather their life stories. Informed by the narrative understanding that we story our identities from the narrative possibilities available to us within the varied discursive contexts of our lives, this thesis draws on these life stories to explore how the young women storied the fashioning of their own identities as young women, as learners and as young parents. It presents their stories of childhood and family life, teenage-hood and schooling, pregnancy and parenthood, their experiences at the School for Teenage Parents, and their lives since leaving the School, in order to consider the role of the School in supporting the positive refashioning of their identities. This thesis draws on social constructionist and narrative theories to interpret the storied contexts of the young women’s lives, and the role these often constraining and difficult contexts played in the fashioning of their multiple identities. Māori culturally responsive pedagogical theories are also drawn on to interpret the culture of the School for Teenage Parents, and its attempts to provide a supportive and affirming family or whānau environment for its students, in order to offer them more positive narrative possibilities of self and identity as young women, as learners and as young parents.