Mano Suave, Mano Dura: Policing the Latino Gang Crisis

• In Event: 199 - Regular Session. Latinos

Abstract

Based on observations during 23 ride alongs with California police officers and making contact with 46 Latino gang associated youths, we find contrasting approaches in policing that we refer to as mano suave (soft handed) and mano dura (hard handed) policing. We find that just as juvenile delinquents encounter “drift” (Matza 1964) in their day-to-day lives, institutional actors like police also drift between punitive and supportive roles in their interactions with youths. We make two primary arguments about the conditions that influence a mano suave or mano dura approach. Officers rely on the investigatory or pretext stop—police stops that seek not to intervene on illegal action, but to investigate the actor—to “check in” with the young Latino men on whom they wish to keep tabs. This “regime of checks” is informed by a logic of prevention, paternalism, and a presumption of symmetrical power relations between themselves and the youth. Second, even when officers hew to a mano suave approach their focus on investigation and prevention often lead them to misinterpret young people’s interactions and intentions and, in the end, return to a more punitive stance in order to compensate for their uncertainty. A process of cultural misrecognition ensures and creates the conditions in which officers “drift” from the mano suave to the mano dura. Ergo, even when officers attempt to use a lenient, mano suave approach to policing, they are bound by the punitive cultural context in which they operate.

Authors

• Victor M. Rios, University of California-Santa Barbara

• Samuel Gregory Prieto, University of San Diego