I'm Ella Alshamahi and this is The Conversation from the BBC World Service,
the programme that amplifies women's voices,
which is really just a fancy way of saying that we bring two women from different countries who share an expertise together and see what happens.
Now, when does a mistake become a crime?
And what do you do when the person who made it is still growing up?
Today's episode is all about juvenile justice.
Marlene Salonen from Finland used to be a personal trainer,
but switched just over two years ago to become a prison officer at Vanta Prison in Finland.
And Fleur Sofferen is a Dutch psychologist and researcher who works at the Academic Collaborative Centre for Youth at Risk and the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Ladies, welcome to the conversation.
Thank you.
Fleur, what drew you to juvenile justice?
Well, I guess I was raised in a family where my dad's a teacher and my mom also works with children.
So I guess I sort of always grew up with the notion that you should always,
you know, care for people, never judge too soon, but always look upon someone's story.
So I started studying psychology and I guess I was also drawn by the behaviours that as a society we...
might misunderstand or relabel a certain way.
And then I had to write a thesis and I really wanted to go to South Africa.
So I basically just wrote everybody in the psychology department of the University of Cape Town and one lady responded and she was busy doing research on young people in South Africa who committed crimes.
From that moment when I started joining her research and I also worked in a prison there,