Punished By Victor Rios: Chapter Analysis

Victor Rios, author of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Youths grew up in Oakland, California. During his childhood there he had an experience that made him return to Oakland to question and study the current issues that the youth’s their face. At the age of 14 he had joined a gang, he did this mostly for protection from other gangs and threats in the area, and during his time in the gang he met another kid named “smiley,” nicknamed because of his knack to smile during every situation, good or bad. Rios would become good friends with him, and even steal a car for him to use as a home at one point when he was kicked out of his own home. Although this would eventually lead to one of his first encounters with bad police officers, as he was severely beaten for what he had done. This combined with the eventual death of “smiley” made Rios feel the need to turn his life around,

The boys sought for this experiment were already delinquent, and as noted this was a case study, these were unique individuals and as such the findings cannot be generalized to the larger population of the United States, California or even Oakland. Another fact that must be noted is that the author utilized snowball sampling, the author went to community organizations and asked to be connected to ‘at risk’ kids, and when he established communication with some of the young men, he asked them to refer him to other youths in similar situations. The author also makes note of the fact that his own experiences as a child may have had a bias on his