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Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and

Society

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The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male

Youth in the Era of Mass Incarceration

Victor M. Rios

Published online: 21 Sep 2006.

To cite this article: Victor M. Rios (2006) The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of Mass

Incarceration, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 8:2, 40-54

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10999940600680457

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Racializing Justice, Disenfrachising Lives 41

Carceralization as a Youth of Color Phenomenon

In the era of mass incarceration, Black and Latino youth face a coming of age crisis

determined by criminalization and carceralization. The majority of Black and Latino

inmates are youth; almost three quarters of all Black and Latino jail and prison inmates in

the U.S. are between the ages of 20-39.1

As of 2003 12% of all Black males in their 20s

were in prison or jail; almost 4% of Latinos and only 1.5% of whites in their 20s were

incarcerated (Harrison, 2003). One in three African American youth ages 20–29 are in- carcerated or on probation or parole (Harrison, 2003).

While Latino youth do not match the outrageous incarceration rates that Black youth

contend with, they too are disproportionately confined, especially in areas with large

Latino populations. For example, as of 2002, in California, Latino youth represented

36% of the states youth population, however, they made up close to 60% of the state’s

juvenile detainees (Villaruel & Walker, 2002); Black youth made up roughly 7.8% of the

state’s population, yet they comprised almost 30% of juvenile detainees (Males &

Macallair, 2000).

In Black and Latino communities, mass incarceration has become a youth phenom- enon. In California, youth of color are 2.5 times more likely than white kids to be tried as

adults and 8.3 times more likely to be incarcerated by adult courts. Ninety-five percent of

all juveniles sent to adult court are youth of color. In Los Angeles a stunning 91% of all

cases in the adult criminal court involve youth (Males & Macallair, 2000). Recent puni- tive expansion and the material effects of mass incarceration have come to affect some of

the youngest populations in Black and Latino communities. The trajectory of this article

is to account for the social effects of mass incarceration and criminalization on young

males of color, those populations most affected by these systems that generate and exac- erbate social misery.

These young adult deviants do not become on their 18th birthday, rather they are

systematically constructed as criminals and face the wrath of the penal state and

criminalization as early as 8 years of age (see for example Ferguson, 2000). Scholars

have argued that in the contemporary historical bloc punishment and carceralization are

at the center of racial inequality and social misery (Davis, 2003; Castells, 1997; Parenti,

2000; Wacquant, 2002). Expanding on this argument, this article will demonstrate that

spillover from the ever-expanding power and punitiveness of criminal justice policies

and practices affect every member of poor racialized communities in multiple ways, es- pecially urban youth of color. Some scholars have begun to analyze this structure of

punishment that extends its tentacles beyond the offender and systematically damages

the transgressors family, friends, and community. Scholars have termed this spillover

effect the “collateral consequences of mass imprisonment” (Chesney-Lind & Mauer, 2004).

These scholars have argued that punishment not only affects the confined individual but

rather expands itself to family members and the inmate’s community. Building on this

argument I demonstrate how the punitive expansion of the state has created a new system

of social relations that stigmatize and criminalize poor youth of color at an everyday level.

Mass imprisonment and the cultural, political, and economic arrangements that ac- company it have had a devastating social impact on young male adolescents in the inner

city, specifically Black and Latino male youth. Furthermore, the lives of Black and Latino

youth who are labeled “deviant” are enforced by institutional entities that treat them as

serious criminal threats ready to commit savage acts of violence even if they have only

been arrested for drug possession or status offenses. This collateral consequence of mass

imprisonment has brought about a network of criminalization, surveillance, and punish- ment that serves as a main socializing and control agent for Black and Latino youth who

have been labeled “deviant.”

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