In Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth by Victor Rios, we have the opportunity to travel with the author as he observes the institutional and personal stories of gang-associated young people in a Southern California community. The author starts by giving a short introduction of himself and what sparked his interest in the youth. The author himself was a gang member and had a troubled past. His life did not turn around until he found himself in the middle of a shooting. He ends up turning his life around with the help of a trusted mentor, which led him to getting a job, which led to college, and ultimately, his Ph.D.

The authors’ goals for his book are clear. He “offers an analysis of the quality of interactions between authority figures and youths and how these interactions impact the ways these youths engage with institutional actors; of how they view themselves, their social contexts, their futures; and how they behave” (Rios 2017, p. 7). Rios attempts to look into the background of the youth and see how their social ties and personal ties shape them. It is clear that the author believes that the youth are shaped by institutions around them, and he writes a book to express this view. “He analyzes how culture plays a key role in determining the well-being of young people that navigate punitive institutional settings. He shows, in attempting to support or reform youths placed at risk, schools and police develop practices that contradict good intentions” (Rios 2017, p. 7). In many sections of the book, the author depicts the clash of culture among the youth and police officers or teachers; he finds that the authority figures, “actually support a specific kind of cultural misframing in young people that often leads them to further criminalization. In the end, he argues that institutional process and power over determine young people’s ability to adopt and refine specific cultural practices and actions that impact their well-being” (Rios 2017, pp. 6–7).

The first chapter in the book is entitled, The Probation School. Punta Vista School opened its doors in the early 1990s in Riverland, California, as an alternative institution for educating students who were failing school or in trouble with the law. Juveniles on probation and students expelled from local high schools—usually for gang related truancy, defiance, fights, and drug use—were mandated to attend Punta Vista School. The author befriends gang members, Jorge and Mark. Benefitting from a snowball effect, he was able to get connected to other gang-associated youth in the neighborhood. He gained access to members of a male street gang that law enforcement had linked with the Mexican Mafia, a notorious prison gang that was otherwise suspicious of outsiders (Rios 2017, p. 29). During his time at the school, he noticed the Latino youth being treated differently than their white counterparts. White boys with similar problems to the Latino boys were labeled ADHD, while they were singled out and positioned as “gang member” (Rios 2017, p. 31). The author also talked about how the school had a very controlled environment, almost resembling a prison. Toxic chemicals seeped from abandoned, dilapidated underground oil; the students had a check in process when they arrived at school where their personal belongings would be presented; shoes removed to ensure no weapons; they were inspected through metal detectors; the classrooms have security guards and video cameras, etc. Lastly, the school’s main mission seemed to not actually teach the students, but to control their unruly behavior. One student stated, “They pretend to teach me, I pretend to learn” (Rios 2017, p. 39). The teachers tried to speak the lingo of the students in a misguided attempt to connect with the students, but they often failed to understand the meaning behind what they said and ultimately missed the mark for establishing meaningful relationships with the youth.

When he discusses the school, we can already see the author’s arguments being supported. Rather than help the students, the institution only further drives them into a corner where they feel they cannot evolve from their current situation. With their teachers having little to no faith in them, they stop caring. They see how factors they cannot control, like race, already have dire consequences very early in life. They are not even provided with a quality place to learn; the institution is filthy and treats them like criminals. They are labeled from the moment they walk in, and that label carriers them throughout their school day.

In the second chapter, The Liquor Store and the Police, the author focuses on the only place in Riverland where the youth felt respected by an adult, Golden State Liquors. Golden State Liquors was a principal gathering point for the boys that the author followed. It was there that they convened, caught up with each other, and talked about life. It was also where they grew up and learned about life through boys older than them. Though it served as a place for risky, health-compromising behaviors, it was the only place in Riverland that the boys felt respected and treated fairly by an adult. The adult they are referring to is the store owner, Abjit. Abjit refused to target the boys as gangsters and criminals. As a result, the boys considered him a supporter, someone who understood them and, in return, they showed care and empathy for his property and his customers. The author also vaguely discussed the police in this chapter and their contribution to the Golden State Liquors. The officers often broke up the gatherings and, in turn, failed to see the social control the store maintained for the kids; once scattered the boys were more likely to engage in crime and be victimized. The police approached them with good intentions, but were greeted with a tense demeanor. The youth saw the officers’ approach to be ingenuous and artificial. Golden State Liquors, a safe place for the boys, was a target for law enforcement.

This chapter offers us insight on how things could be different if the kids were treated fairly. We see a complete switch on how they treat adults. In school, the authority figures give them no respect, in turn they do not follow the rules and do not put forth the effort. The school had to find ways to control the students. At Golden State Liquors, the owner did not have to go through these lengths. He respected the kids and they respected him and his property.

In the third chapter titled, Cultural Misframing, the author discusses a style absorbed by the youth and targeted by the police. For gang-associated Latino youth in Riverland, cholo style—a shaved head, baggy clothes, and visible tattoos—portrayed a dominant identity. Cholo also refers to a large subculture that dresses and acts in ways that some view as thuggish and gangster-like. However, some Latino communities embrace it because it is not associated with crime and violence, but rather with a youthful, temporary, caricaturized identity. Youngsters use it to feel empowered; however, schools and law enforcement did not understand the complex identity and instead labeled cholo as criminal style.

This cultural misframing leads to dire consequences. Once again, these youth become targets, menacing or disreputable individuals who require punishment. With few options to bring out their identity, they resort to style. However, when the officers saw this, they correlated it with criminals. They do this because the people they already target now share a street style. Without fully understanding the meaning behind this style, the officers and teachers are left to their own interpretations. With few authority figures who actually interact with the culture and the people, they cannot possibly be able to understand them. Being left to their own interpretations, the officers start profiling these youth.

Chapter four is entitled Multiple Manhoods. In this chapter, the author discusses the concept of manhood absorbed by police and how it differs from the manhood the youth validate. Police attempted to reinforce a particular form of working-class masculinity that was less available to these young men that the officers did not seem to understand. They responded to perceived attacks on their masculine self-identity and authority with violence and used toughness, dominance, disrespect, humiliation, and aggressive force to try to control the boys upon arrest. The boys in the neighborhood gained masculine esteem and status from the acknowledgement of other men; but with limited access to traditional avenues used to accomplish this task, they negotiated alternative masculinities, particularly through interactions with police officers. They adeptly demonstrated aspects of dominant, street, working class, and subordinate masculinities in a complicated enactment (Rios 2017, p. 107). This redefined masculinity being more achievable. The masculinity demonstrated by the police they quickly realized was not going to get them far in the streets.

Many of the police-youth encounters the author witnessed involved masculinity challenges. Police consistently challenged and mocked the boys for their way of talking, theirdress, their friends and associates, and their failure to display conventional masculinity. More than enforcing the law, police were enforcing masculinity out of a desire to preserve their authority, prove their manhood, and maintain their dominant status on the streets. The two forms of masculinity as one may suspect often clashed. The police did not respect their forms of manhood which angered the youth. To them, the police officers having to respond to someone above them, not knowing the rules of the streets, and not cooperating with them made them less of a man. These are the attributes available to the youth, the attainable ones. If both parties dispel each other’s ideas of manhood, they disrespect each other. Disrespect is unacceptable to both.

In the next chapter, The Mano Suave and Mano Dura of Stop and Frisk, the author found that officers drift between mano suave and mano dura (good cop, bad cop) based on their cultural misrecognition of young people’s actions. Officers used three rationalizations to justify “regime of checks:” prevention, paternalism, and power relationships between police and youth. Even when officers had the right to stop someone on the street because the person was on probation or parole, they often used another reason that would allow them a longer time to detain that person and ask questions. Officers first cited prevention to justify their approach, a quality that is largely immeasurable. In addition to prevention, the officers viewed their surveillance in the neighborhood as benevolent paternalism. They saw relationships to young people almost as overseeing parent, and lastly show power. A key determinant of an officer’s drift between mano suave and mano dura was the officer’s misrecognition and misframing of a youth’s interactional and cultural cues: “a young person’s apparent effort to ‘get straight,’ as officers call it, especially in compliance with law enforcement’s demands, influenced an officer to drift to man suave” (Rios 2017, p. 134). In contrast, the officers would drift to mano dura when “youths talked back to the police or resisted or refused their demands” (Rios 2017, p. 137). However, as the author pointed out, the officers often misrecognized the youth’s cultural cues and used them to target them for suspicion (Rios 2017, p. 137). As a result, the youth lost respect and trust for the police, hindering the relationship.

This is again how the officers’ attempt to establish their power in the neighborhood. They are unable to achieve status through the ways the youth and neighborhood men go about it. Instead, they demand the respect, because they are able to take action if they are not given it. They are able to use their discretion and treat each stop and search the way they want. If the youth showed respect, they got the good cop. If they did not, the police reminded them about their power.

The last chapter is entitled Immigrant Targets. Once a youth was arrested, the legal system scrutinized his legal status, and the court could impose incarceration or probation. Youth who experienced these multiple layers of illegality as outcasts from family, the school, police, and conventional peers are vulnerable to becoming involved in delinquency and crime. Institutional labels matter in the real world. Once an individual has been given an official label by the law, like “illegal” or “felon,” these labels follow them across institutional settings and social interactional terrains, creating systems of interpretations, symbols, interactions, and practices independent from the law but very much contributing to punitive, demoralizing, detrimental outcomes (Rios 2017, pp. 152–153).

Youth who experience multiple layers of illegality as outcasts from family, school, police are vulnerable to becoming involved with delinquency and crime. The gang provided them with a sense of belonging where they have never felt before. This however comes with a price. This is why the quality of interactions between youths and institutional authority figures impact is so important. It impacts the youth’s well-being, future aspirations, perceptions, and attitudes. “Institutions play a powerful role in delegitimizing, and in determining the kinds of cultural frames available to, and adopted by, targeted populations” (Rios 2017, p.154).

This book described very important implications that institutions have for youth. It highlights how important it is for quality institutions to be in place. Juveniles at a young age reveal how many background factors that lead them to certain actions. It is important for policy makers, police officers, teachers, and others who interact with youth to not look only at their delinquent acts. This has been a lesson long learned by criminologists, but even those who focus on the influence of gangs (see, e.g., Dong and Krohn 2016), self-control (see, e.g., Fine et al. 2016), families and communities (see, e.g., Kramer-Kuhn and Farrell 2016), time use (see, e.g., Wolf et al. 2015) and even racial discrimination (see, e.g., Evans et al. 2016) would benefit tremendously from taking a closer look at how multiple institutions approach minority youth and contribute to their problem behavior. These youth are much more complicated than the “offender” label used to describe them and their actions are much more complicated than the typical factors used to understand them.