A Brief Analysis Of Street Life, Gangs By Victor M. Rios

The film Boyz N’ the hood follows the lives of a group of young African American men growing up in the hood where poverty, crime and violence are rampant. The three main characters are Darin (Dough boy), Ricky (Darin’s brother), and Tre. In this this film there are many schools of criminology’s that help explain the roots of the criminality portrayed.

Rios describes his observations as he shadows young gang associated Latinos, and explains the faultiness of the systems they encounter which set them up to fail. Throughout the book, Victor Rios’ examination allows the reader to see the lack of support and resources Latino youths hold which in turn, forces them to revert back to negative lifestyles. Analysis

Challenged Book: Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days In L.A. In the book, Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days In L.A, written by Luis J. Rodriguez, the main character Luis Rodriguez, experiences a crazy early teen life of being a gang member in East Los Angeles. Luis Rodriguez describes La Vida Loca, which means “the crazy life”, through the gang culture, the endless shootings he witnessed, beatings, arrests, and also through murder, drugs, and suicide.

How well Wes Moore describes the culture of the streets, and particularly disenfranchised adolescents that resort to violence, is extraordinary considering the unbiased perspective Moore gives. Amid Moore’s book one primary theme is street culture. Particularly Moore describes the street culture in two cities, which are Baltimore and the Bronx. In Baltimore city the climate and atmosphere, of high dropout rates, high unemployment and poor public infrastructure creates a perfect trifecta for gang violence to occur. Due to what was stated above, lower income adolescent residents in Baltimore are forced to resort to crime and drugs as a scapegoat of their missed opportunities.

Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, a book by University of California, Professor Victor Rios, is set in the backdrop of Oakland, California. This book examines the very difficult lives of young Latino and African American boys who are caught up in the vicious cycle of delinquency in a legal system that restricts their chances of becoming successful. Rios studies the lives of boys growing up in a difficult background. He notes that the criminal justice system is very prevalent throughout many aspects of their daily activities.

In the process of working toward the American Dream, people struggle to fit in, to belong, to be accepted. For many of them, an important part of the American Dream is the chance to reinvent themselves—the opportunity to become someone different, someone better. In “Outlaw: My Life in America as an Undocumented Immigrant”, Jose Antonio Vargas is an “undocumented immigrant” who has been living illegally in the U.S. since he was twelve years old. To chase his American dreams, he embodied a lie until it became unbearable and he expose his truth and let the masks crumble onto the ground. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. broke unjust laws and engaged in nonviolence direct action in order to pursue his American dream of equality and freedom.

Kids in the most disadvantaged neighborhood, with low family resources, bad schools, and neighborhoods characterized by violence are the ones who are being punished unfairly and are not given second chances. This is because of the discrimination and the bias of the criminal justice system against poor African-American communities, which represent a concentrated disadvantage in that case. Moreover it affirms the theory that the poor are more likely to get to prison because there is a bias in arrest such as the neighborhood social class that affects the presence of the police and their arrests. In that case 6th street is considered a neighborhood that represents communities that are disadvantaged, and therefore the presence of police is greater than necessary. Instead of having the resources from outside to ameliorate the conditions of the neighborhood and improve schools or academic institutions, the efforts and resources are being invested in the war against crimes, but without giving an alternative solution for their

We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way

Chapter one of the book opens with an in-depth explanation of the methods and the inspiration behind the study. Rios goes into great detail of how he recruited the boys for the study and proves additional information about their history with the criminal justice system. However, most the chapter focuses on the patterns of punishment that are observed in Oakland that the boys experienced on a routine basis. The chapter covers the police brutality and negativity on the streets that leads to continuous victimization.

Punished was Victor Rios study of criminalized black and Latino boys in Oakland, California. Victor Rios wanted to understand how the criminalization influenced the young boys. He was concerned about the effect the punitive environment had on the way the boys valued themselves and everything they do and the patterns of punishment and justice practices enforced by adult authority. He thought that criminalization was deeply embedded in Oakland and the social ecology, in which the boys grew up, was completely punitive. Victor Rios combined the methods of critical criminology and urban ethnography to study the effects and consequences that criminalization had on the marginalized young boys.

Alex Sanchez’s interview with Steven Osuna entitled They’re Not Solving the Problem, They’re Displacing It, expresses the struggles, misconceptions, and everyday life of a Latino immigrant in the United States’ transition to a MS13 gang members in El Salvador. Alex Sanchez, former MS13 member, is a peacemakers and co-founder/ executive director of Homies Unidos in Los Angelos. This organization’s mission is to bring peace to the youth of Central America who are immigrants, involved in gangs, and criminalized. Sanchez reveals how his personal experiences as an immigrant and MS13 gang member has contributed to his present line of work. Further, Sanchez discusses issues such as being targeted by the INS and LAPD, death squads, and anti-gang initiatives

Victor Rios, author of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Youths grew up in Oakland, California. During his childhood there he had an experience that made him return to Oakland to question and study the current issues that the youth’s their face. At the age of 14 he had joined a gang, he did this mostly for protection from other gangs and threats in the area, and during his time in the gang he met another kid named “smiley,” nicknamed because of his knack to smile during every situation, good or bad. Rios would become good friends with him, and even steal a car for him to use as a home at one point when he was kicked out of his own home. Although this would eventually lead to one of his first encounters with bad police officers, as he was severely beaten for what he had done.

Victor Villasenor was born on May 11th, 1940 in Carlsbad, California where his parents had settled down after immigrating from Mexico. He grew up on a ranch with his four siblings in Oceanside where they only spoke spanish until they went to school. Because Victor only spoke spanish he was bullied by teachers and students alike for his heritage and inability to do well in school. Being bullied and ridiculed when he was a child is why Villasenor was insecure about where he came from and who he was, and inevitably shaped him into who he was in and out of school. Villasenor did poorly in school because he had trouble with English and reading he primarily got all D’s and F’s, and had to retake third and fourth grade because he flunked, which resulted with him resorting to cheating the rest of his academic career.

Synthesis Research Paper Everyday growing up as a young black male we have a target on our back. Society was set out for black males not to succeed in life. I would always hear my dad talk about how police in his younger days would roam around the town looking for people to arrest or get into an altercation with. As a young boy growing up I couldn’t believe some of the things he said was happening. However as I got older I would frequently hear about someone getting killed by the police force.

Throughout the 17th-century gangs have been causing havoc in people's life and destroying the society. The National Institute of Justice (2011) has defined a gang as "A group of collective members which create an atmosphere of intimidation among citizens. " Many of these gangs are well organized, using different forms of violence to control neighbourhoods and to conduct their illegal activities. The National Gang Threat Assessment (2011) reports that “Gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions.” Street Gangs have caused incidences of violence that is confined in the inner city of many countries.