The Hypercriminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of Mass Incarceration

Abstract

This chapter discusses how black and Latino youth labeled “deviant” are affected by criminalization after coming in contact with the juvenile justice system. The findings are based on ethnographic interviews I conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2002 to 2005. From these data, I argue that black and Latino youth are further stigmatized and “hypercriminalized” on entering the juvenile justice system even when the majority are arrested for nonviolent offenses. Nonviolent juvenile offenders thus experience the full force of direct and indirect punishment and criminalization traditionally aimed at violent offenders. Furthermore, in a time when punitive crime control measures have drastically increased, youth of color experience this hypercriminalization not only from criminal justice institutions but also from non-criminal justice structures traditionally intended to nurture: the school, the family, and the community center. Ultimately, in the era of mass incarceration, a “youth control complex” created by a network of racialized criminalization and punishment deployed from various institutions of control and socialization has formed to manage, control, and incapacitate black and Latino youth. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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