Adult time for juvenile crime: The social effects of criminalization on Chicano and Black male youth

This ethnography examines how the forces of punitive juvenile crime policies and criminalization affect the identity and attitude of urban youth. Criminology, Penology, and Sociology have addressed questions about the source of criminalization of poor and marginalized communities in the era of mass incarceration and punitive transformation, but there is a dearth of literature that actually examines the material conditions of the affected youth populations as a result of the state's punitive expansion. In addition, those very criminalized populations have not been examined as credible witnesses and informants as to how recent criminal justice system transformations, such as mass incarceration and zero-tolerance policing and punishing of youth as adults, combined with the massive loss of viable jobs and the decline of the welfare state in the last quarter century have affected the social subjectivity, social mobility, and social control of Black and Chicano youth in urban settings. What do youth have to say about the state's punitive expansion? What are their experiences when they encounter the criminal justice system? How, according to them, are their lives affected by this system?;My findings show how, for working poor and working-class Black and Chicano youth, a massive network of social control and socialization imposes itself on the lives of these youth from a young age. This "youth control complex" is characterized by the criminalization that both criminal justice (police, probation, courts, and juvenile justice facilities) and youth development institutions (the family, the school, the community center, and the community) impose on the youth. All of the youth I interviewed spoke about their attitudes and identities being shaped in relation to being criminalized. They experienced similar punitive treatment from the police officers who handcuffed them, the probation officers who monitored them, the school administrators who placed them in detention rooms, and even family members who outcast them by treating them as failures. In effect, this "youth control complex" became a primary socializing institution and a source of identity formation for these youth.;Ultimately, this study will contribute to the following fields: ethnic studies by contextualizing criminalization and the criminal justice system as central processes and institutions in the subject formation of young Chicano and Black males; sociology and penology by bringing in the voice of the criminalized and punished subject into the center of the study in order to also understand the system from the perspective of those who are affected by its function; and community activism, by complicating our understanding of the very system that many activists say must be overhauled or dismantled.