Summary Victor Rios’ book Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth (2017) is one in which popular issues among institutions and authorities are illustrated to express the marginalization and unsupportiveness Latino youth in the U.S. is subject to. Rios presents these institutional dilemmas in his book through the experiences and research conducted over the course of five years (from 2007 to 2012). Human Targets provides its readers with both the analytical perspective of events and personal comments from individuals. The study conducted by Victor Rios focuses on a California city and the young Latinos’ interactions with police officers, as well as within schools and detention facilities. Rios describes his observations as he shadows young gang associated Latinos, and explains the faultiness of the systems they encounter which set them up to fail. Throughout the book, Victor Rios’ examination allows the reader to see the lack of support and resources Latino youths hold which in turn, forces them to revert back to negative lifestyles. Analysis …show more content…
Throughout the textbook (Latinos in The United States: Diversity and Change (2015) by Rogelio Sáenz and Maria C. Morales) as well as the discussions held in class so far, the same themes present can be tied into Human Targets. Although the book primarily focuses on the criminalization and marginalization of Latino youth, specifically the youth that is gang associated, the hurdles the youth in the book face can be connected to common hurdles Latinos, as a whole, face in the U.S. Education, Latinos in the workforce, teenage employment rates, and machismo are all examples of subjects touched on in the book as well as in the classroom, and all are merged into the book to aid the understanding of the issues