Sorted on the Outs: Carceral Spillover and Gang Labeling

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Exposing the Links Between Criminology and Education: Needed Conversations for Policy, Practice, and System Change

Abstract

Background and Purpose: In this paper, I discuss how the racial sorting process institutionalized in California’s prisons has established a framework that local police and school authorities commonly rely on when labeling youth of color as criminal gang members. As men enter the state’s prison system, they are systematically sorted into racialized categories that comprise what I call the “carceral social order” – a system that reframes one’s racial identity, hometown, and peer networks as affiliations to gang-associated groups. This system structures the segregation that inmates encounter throughout their terms, and identifies nearly every prisoner as a potential gang member or associate, as there is no avoiding this sorting and labeling process. However, this system does not remain contained within the prison either, as the concentration of imprisonment in poor communities of color pushes the conflicts and identities generated by this system back into these neighborhoods. Additionally, I argue that the logic that guides racial sorting in prison has emerged as a blueprint for identifying Black and Latina/o youth as specific types of gang members in a range of community and educational settings.

Methods and Findings: In analyzing forty interviews with criminalized youth on juvenile probation, I found that many participants were first validated as gang members in experiences that closely mirrored the prison’s sorting process: law enforcement personnel and/or school staff members commonly used young people’s race, home community, and peer or familial networks to categorize them into carceral affiliations. For example, rather than connecting Latina/o youth to the particular street gangs present in their communities, the “gangs” they were assumed to be members of were often merely listed as Norteños, Sureños, or Bulldogs – the same rivaling groups that Latino inmates are sorted into in prison. As this logic becomes entrenched, nearly any form of expression, activity, or communication that youth perform is then interpreted as further evidence of gang-related criminality. In these experiences, we can see the close relationship between prison sorting and gang validation processes, but also begin to understand how the reproduction of carceral labeling works to strengthen the connection between the prison and criminalized communities.

Conclusion and implications: This paper contributes to our understanding of how youth are labeled as gang
members in schools and communities and are “sorted” into the prisonization process and away from
educational opportunities. Too often, educators and law enforcement depend on unfounded perspectives of
“who” constitutes a gang member which unfortunately will dictate how that youth is treated in the
classrooms, schools, and communities. I will provide implications for education practitioners and social
science scholars to understand how to reframe how youth can and should be treated.

Author

• patrick lopez-aguado, Santa Clara University