The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of Mass Incarceration

This article discusses how Black and Latino youth labeled “deviant” are impacted by criminalization after coming in contact with the juvenile justice system. The findings are based on ethnographic interviews I conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2002–2005. From this data I argue that Black and Latino youth are further stigmatized and “hyper-criminalized” upon entering the juvenile justice system even when the majority are arrested for non-violent offenses. Non-violent juvenile offenders thus experience the full force of direct and indirect punishment and criminalization traditionally aimed at violent offenders. Furthermore, in a time when punitive crime control measures have drastically increased, youth of color not only experience this hyper-criminalization from criminal justice institutions but also from non-criminal justice structures traditionally intended to nurture: the school, the family, and the community center. Ultimately, in the era of mass incarceration, a “youth control complex” created by a network of racialized criminalization and punishment deployed from various institutions of control and socialization has formed to manage, control, and incapacitate Black and Latino youth.