Human targets : schools, police, and the criminalization of Latino youth
Victor M. Rios (Author), James Diego Vigil
"At fifteen, Victor Rios found himself a human target - flat on his ass amid a hail of shotgun fire, desperate for money and a place on the street. Faced with the choice of escalating a drug turf war or eking out a living elsewhere, he turned to a teacher, who mentored him and helped him find a job. That job would alter the course of his whole life - putting him on the road to college and eventually a PhD. In Human Targets, Rios takes us to the streets of California, where we encounter young men who find themselves in much the same situation as fifteen-year-old Victor. We follow young gang members into schools, homes, community organizations, and detention facilities, watch them interact with police, grow up to become fathers, get jobs, get rap sheets - and in some cases get killed. What is it that sets apart young people like Rios who succeed and survive from the ones who don't? Rios makes a powerful case that the traditional good kid/bad kid, street kid/decent kid dichotomy is much too simplistic, arguing instead that authorities and institutions help create these identities - and that they can play an instrumental role in providing young people with the resources for shifting between roles."--Page 4 of cover
Print Book, English, 2017
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2017