Navigating the Thin Line Between Education and Incarceration: An Action Research Case Study on Gang-Associated Latino Youth

Abstract

This article examines data collected from an ethnographic research project conducted with 56 gang-associated Latino youths ages 15 to 21 from 2007 to 2009. The objectives of the study were to examine how poor Latino gang-associated youths perceived schooling and policing and to find out if the research process could promote educational aspirations among this population. ¹ Data from extensive observations, focus groups, interviews, and workshops with gang-associated youths at a continuation high school, a community center, and on the streets are presented. These young people encountered a multitude of negative interactions with authority figures on a daily basis. These adversities impacted their views of future outcomes: Many attributed having dropped out of school to negative treatment. Based on preliminary findings, I collaborated with the community in an attempt to help these young people reintegrate into school and the community. As a group, we implemented a mentoring program, a gender-specific workshop series, a community-college awareness program, and a once-a-week workshop series with “shot-callers” (the influential leaders of the gang). In this article, I specifically focus on the outcomes of this action research with street-oriented youths and the methodological approach involved in undertaking such an endeavor. I find that, what I call, a “public relations” approach facilitated the transformation process in some youth.

¹I define gang-associated as any youth who either has self-reported or has been labeled by community members to be involved in a gang. My definition of gang is based on Klein and Maxson's (2008): “any durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity” (p. 3).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Jose Lumbreras, Melissa Guzman, Patrick Lopez-Aguado, Belen Vacarro, Mario Galicia, Gisselle Lopez-Tello, and Ismael Huerta for their hard work on this project. I also thank the University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicano Studies Institute and Academic Senate for their generous investment in this project.

Notes

¹I define gang-associated as any youth who either has self-reported or has been labeled by community members to be involved in a gang. My definition of gang is based on Klein and Maxson's (2008): “any durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity” (p. 3).

²For example, in 2009, the town based most of the city council election debates on the gang crisis.

³Participant names, the name of the city, and the name of institutions have been changed to protect the youth in this study.

⁴I borrow from Payne's (2008) notion of street-life-oriented youth. He contended that young people who end up on the street learn to utilize the various resources within it as forms of resilience. The term street-life-oriented is a more appropriate term then gang member because it captures the specific context in which young people are engaged in action—the street. In this article I use both terms interchangeably.

⁵Photovoice is a research method by which young people take pictures of their environment, significant others, and community members, and analyze the photographs to map the everyday life of their communities.

⁶Although I attempted to study gang-associated young women as well, it was difficult to find them, as relatively few young women participated in the gang; those that I attempted to interview were difficult to track down. We were only able to collect interviews with eight women. As a result, this article is primarily focused on analyzing the experiences and perceptions of young men.

⁷As alternatives to the minimum grade point averages (GPAs) required by many at-risk youth programs, policymakers and program personnel should implement a noncognitive assessment approach that tests other forms of abilities and resilience. Sedlacek (2004) has been at the forefront of developing alternatives to tests like the SAT or the ACT and GPA requirements by examining factors such as how students deal with a wide range of problems in different contexts.