Conceptual and empirical obstacles in defining MS‐13

Abstract

Research Summary Past and present gang scholarship is marked by debate as to the appropriate criteria for defining gangs and gang membership. Mara Salvatrucha, or MS‐13, highlights some obstacles in conceptualizing gangs and operationalizing gang membership. Although MS‐13 has generated attention in recent years, little systematic criminological research exists on the gang. Drawing on in‐depth interviews and surveys of law‐enforcement gang experts, we link long‐standing issues of gang definition and measurement to MS‐13 in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Policy Implications Gang and immigration enforcement are inextricably linked in the case of MS‐13. The ambiguous, contested, and varied means by which gangs are defined and labeled may result in the overpolicing and overcriminalization of young immigrants of color and youth of color in general. Beyond unsubstantiated police stops, arrests, convictions, and gang enhancements, such labeling practices may lead to collateral immigration consequences including deportation and permanent bars to reentry into the United States.

Critical Criminology and Race: Re‐examining the Whiteness of US Criminological Thought

“…For example, understandings of super‐predators (Allen and Whitt 2020; Linde 2011), the MAOA gene (Wells et al . 2017; Williams 2013, p.720), the morbid and racist scientific politics of positional asphyxia versus excited delirium (Jouvenal 2015; National Public Radio 2021a); the conflation of gang violence with Latino migrants (Barak, León and Maguire 2020) are all influenced by what criminologists do, say and write – and what we fail to do, say and write (see Belknap 2015, p.12).…”

Carceral ethnography in a time of pandemic: Examining migrant detention and deportation during COVID-19

“…Furthermore, prison ethnographers have long identified specific methodological, epistemological, and ethical issues around working ethnographically in spaces of confinement which might apply productively to reimagining ethnographic praxis during the pandemic. These include the question of research access to sites of detention and incarceration to document everyday life and routines in these institutions ( Bosworth and Kellezi 2016 ; Hasselberg 2016 ; Maillet et al, 2017 ; Wacquant 2002 ); questions of research ethics and reflexivity in studying carceral settings ( Bell and Wynn 2020 ; Bosworth and Kellezi 2017 ; Esposito 2017 ; Hammersley 2015 ; Turnbull 2018 ); the prison–society relation and the articulation between intramural and extramural worlds ( Boe 2020 ; Brown and Schept 2017 ; Cunha 2014 ; Fassin 2017 ; Gill et al, 2018 ; Weegels et al, 2020 ), and the importance of contextualization of ethnographic observations from within the prison walls with other related institutions including courts, police, and the multiple state and non-state actors in the infrastructure of deportation ( Barak et al, 2020 ; Berg 2021 ; Conlon and Hiemstra 2017 ; Coutin 2003 ; Könönen 2019 ; Mountz et al, 2013 ; Provine et al, 2016 ). Many of these concerns highlighted by prison ethnographers can be applied to the pandemic context more broadly and were helpful to us in conceiving our research strategy for this project.…”

Latino Criminology: Unfucking Colonial Frameworks in “Latinos and Crime” Scholarship

“…According to the latest publicly available Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey, as of January 2014, 46.2% of nationally surveyed police organizations had zero Black full-time sworn personnel, and 48.2% of surveyed police organizations employed zero Hispanic or Latino full-time sworn personnel (United States Department of Justice 2015). Even in urban and metropolitan communities with significant Spanishspeaking populations and relatively diversified police forces, existing police data do not provide an in-depth account of how Latino subjectivities are formed, experienced, or weaponized in recruitment and retention processes (see Gustafson 2013;Jordan et al 2009;Urbina and Alvarez 2015) or in addressing specific crime-related issues involving Latino communities (see Barak et al 2020).…”

“…What project does social disorganization theory and concepts of "collective efficacy" truly serve-apart from deflecting attention away from current white supremacist policies? What, if anything, does criminological theory really offer for addressing acute and structural violence involving Latino youth gangs when robustly-funded policing models still cannot get a grip on addressing the sources of youth violence and delinquency (see Barak et al 2020)? Why does institutional anomie theory remain so divorced from racialized state crime (Ward 2015), and why is it that at the time of writing, only one criminological publication (Sohoni and Rorie 2019) plainly and incisively articulates Whiteness itself as a risk factor for committing white-collar and corporate crime?…”

“…This special issue, along with the programming and activist efforts by criminologists like Dr. Rita Shah, reflect those forms of organic leadership. The editorial boards of our flagship journals (e.g., Criminology; Criminology & Public Policy) have also evolved, and forward-looking editors (e.g., Dr. Cynthia Lum, Dr. Jody Miller) have exercised leadership to include the rigorous scholarship that also modernizes the mainstream literature (see Panfil 2020;Barak et al 2020). …”