![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to understand whether aspirations and ideas of a “good life” contribute to explaining serious delinquent behavior amongst young men in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The study involved survey administration to two groups of young males, one of them serving a prison sentence for organized criminal activity in Ciudad Juárez (n = 180), and a comparison sample of young men with no criminal record (n = 180). Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with respondents in the offender sample. The study revealed initial evidence of common aspirations across respondents in both samples and found similarities in ideas of what constitutes a good life. However, the findings also revealed that offenders were more materially inclined and used illicit substances than the non-offender sample. Furthermore, the offender sample also exhibited greater tendency toward altruistic expenditures and care for families than the comparison group.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. This figure is a very rough estimate, partly because the Peña Nieto government no longer reports drug trafficking related executions (Watt & Zepeda, Citation2012).
2. Los Zetas was originally founded by defectors of the Special Forces Corps of Mexico (GAFE), and later became the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, before they split and formed their own group. They are by far the most violent criminal group operating in the country.
3. For example, in the case of Rio de Janeiro – a city where 36% of adolescents from the lowest socioeconomic group are neither studying nor economically active – the income opportunities offered by drug trafficking gangs can be exceptional. See Benvenuti (Citation2003).
4. For example, in terms of gender, 95.2% of the population serving time in penitentiaries at the national level was male, and only 4.8% was female (SEGOB, Citation2013). There is no data available on age distribution of penitentiary population.
5. According to Clark, “any realistic/practical account of the good [life] may need to include some less virtuous functionings and capabilities” (Clark, Citation2016).
6. All names in the paper are pseudonyms.
7. For example, one respondent mentioned that for his work as a jornalero, or day laborer picking fruit, he would make 120.00 MXN on a daily basis; while for drug harvesting he would make 250.00 MXN, and he would be provided with a meal. Another mentioned that working in the assembly plant as an operator (the lowest level of employment in the assembly plants), he would make a daily wage of 150.00 MXN, for his assignments with organized crime (he did not specify the nature, nor did I press him to do so), he would be paid 50,000.00 MXN for each assignment.
8. This means that their monthly incomes prior to their incarceration were below the well-being line used to measure income poverty in Mexico and as such, were insufficient to purchase both a basic food and a non-food basket of items. Income poverty in Mexico is measured using two thresholds: the minimum well-being line and the well-being line. The well-being line considers the per capita monthly cost of a food and a non-food basket of items. The non-food basket considers the monthly cost of additional necessary household expenditures, including for example, the costs of using public transportation, cleaning items for the household, personal care items, clothing and accessories, amongst others. The costs of the baskets vary between urban and rural areas. In addition, they were deprived in at least one of the six social indicators used to measure multidimensional poverty in Mexico by CONEVAL: 1) educational lagging; 2) access to health services, 3) access to social security; 4) quality and spaces of dwelling, 5) access to food, and 6) access to basic services.
9. The CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch (A&F), Mike Jeffries openly admitted years ago that the brand targets an exclusively “attractive” and white market. In 2004, the company was sued for giving positions to white applicants and excluding minorities (“Thin and beautiful”, Citation2013).
10. A concept used to exclusively describe the sons of the most powerful men in Mexico, who often flout their privilege on social media and whose misbehavior at home and abroad usually goes unpunished.
11. This participant mentioned that he was not involved in organized crime, rather was involved with a gang.
12. A study using data collected in 2001 and 2002 on drug use in Mexico found that only 2.3% of the population aged between 18 and 65 had used drugs in the past twelve months (Medina-Mora et al., Citation2006).
13. The Mexican youth survey found that in 2010, 5.8% of young individuals indicated that they had consumed drugs at least once in their lives (IMJUVE, Citation2010), constituting a much higher figure than the national estimates by Medina-Mora et al. (Citation2006).