Punished was Victor Rios study of criminalized black and Latino boys in Oakland, California. Victor Rios wanted to understand how the criminalization influenced the young boys. He was concerned about the effect the punitive environment had on the way the boys valued themselves and everything they do and the patterns of punishment and justice practices enforced by adult authority. He thought that criminalization was deeply embedded in Oakland and the social ecology, in which the boys grew up, was completely punitive. Victor Rios combined the methods of critical criminology and urban ethnography to study the effects and consequences that criminalization had on the marginalized young boys. Critical criminology is the study of the relationship between crime and power. …show more content…
Urban ethnography, a systematic method used to examine culture developing in everyday life, let Rios discern the difficult aspects, unfortunate circumstances, and social relations of the young men’s lives. Victor Rios observed, shadowed, and interviewed delinquent inner-city youth males to answer his question of the effect of the punishment on the boys. As Rio studied the life of these males he discovered a youth control complex where punishment was present in everyday social life, and the behavior of these marginalized young men were criminalized, pointing them to incarceration, disgrace, and exclusion. Racialization, harassment, punishment, surveillance, and detention by all adult figures were all pieces of the pattern of the social order in Oakland that shaped the way the young men created worldviews about themselves and the deeply rooted social stances in their community. Rios found social incapacitation present upon these marginalized males. The boys lack a sense of humanity and passion, they are pushed deeper into social exclusion because of the punitive social order among them. Black and Latino males are seen as criminal risks, and as a generation are brought to social and physical