Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys

Written by Victor M. Rios

Narrated by Rudy Sanda

Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California, in the 1980s and 90s. A former gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios managed to escape the bleak outcome of many of his friends and earned a PhD at Berkeley and returned to his hometown to study how inner-city young Latino and African American boys develop their sense of self in the midst of crime and intense policing. Punished examines the difficult lives of these young men, who now face punitive policies in their schools, communities, and a world where they are constantly policed and stigmatized.



Rios followed a group of forty delinquent black and Latino boys for three years. These boys found themselves in a vicious cycle, caught in a spiral of punishment and incarceration as they were harassed, profiled, watched, and disciplined at young ages, even before they had committed any crimes, eventually leading many of them to fulfill the destiny expected of them. But beyond a fatalistic account of these marginalized young men, Rios finds that the very system that criminalizes them and limits their opportunities, sparks resistance and a raised consciousness that motivates some to transform their lives and become productive citizens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: May 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781541470781

Reviews for Punished

[gvenezia-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book exhibits why the imperative statements "work harder and you'll succeed," and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" are utter bullshit. Victor Rios examines 40 young men in the ghetto of Oakland in this book, set-up as part case study, part analysis. These young men of Oakland are in a catch-22, damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. They live in a system where schools, media, families, gangs, peers, and society at-large are against them, what Rios calls the "youth control complex." In this system, the young men have the general choice of being a gangster to gain dignity and respect in their community (and receiving all the concurrent punishment, stigmatization, violence, abuse, and consequences) or playing good in hopes of getting out (but where they will still be falsely accused, arrested, beat, and stigmatized as well as ostracized by their family and friends). Clearly, the punitive-centric system is not working for Oakland (or the other criminalized ghettos of the world) and so Rios calls on an upending of this system towards the end of the book. We should be working on nurturing instead of criminalizing children and adolescents. Only a reform of the criminalized, punitive-centric system will yield positive results and actual opportunity for these young men.