The Probation School

Punta Vista School opened its doors in the early 1990s in Riverland, California, as an alternative institution for educating students who were failing school or in trouble with the law. Juveniles on probation and students expelled from local high schools — usually for gang-related truancy, defiance, fights, and drug use — were mandated to attend Punta Vista School. Its mission was to educate those youths released from incarceration or those truants who had missed too many days at the conventional school to be allowed to return.

Jorge and Mark were two of the first youths I met at Punta Vista. Over time, I shadowed and interviewed them to learn about the institutional forces that converged to impact them. Punta Vista School and the surrounding streets of South Riverland formed the main nexus where youths like Jorge and Mark interacted with authority figures. Eventually, I hung out on the streets of the south side and in other relevant places — the conventional high school, the community center, and the courtroom — to follow up with Jorge, Mark, and other gang-associated youths.

For two months, I observed classes at Punta Vista before I approached Mark and Jorge, gang-associated youths who had reported being previously arrested and listed in law enforcement's gang database. They were also described by school officials as gang members. Over the years, the boys shifted between labeling themselves as gang members or alleged gang members, depending on their attitudes and circumstances. The boys agreed to allow me to interview and observe them. In addition, Jorge and Mark connected me with other gang-associated young men in the neighborhood. With this snowball method, I gained access to members of a male street gang that law enforcement had linked with the Mexican Mafia, a notorious prison gang that was otherwise suspicious of outsiders.

Despite these introductions and connections, gaining the trust of some of these young men was not easy. In fact, some stated that they did not trust me even after four years in the field. Their main concern was that one day I would turn data I collected over to law enforcement. Therefore, for the youths' safety and my own protection, over time I acquired a certificate of confidentiality from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which allows the researcher to refuse to disclose identifiable research information in response to legal demands. Part of the certificate mandates that "persons so authorized to protect the privacy of such individuals may not be compelled in any Federal, State, or local civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings to identify such individuals." Eventually, some of the boys trusted me enough to allow me to shadow them at the park, the street, the community center, their schools, and at Golden State Liquors store.

When I first met Jorge, a short, scrawny fifteen-year-old Latino, he had a shaved head and preferred to dress in extra-baggy polyester work pants or shorts — Dickies or Ben Davis — and extra-large white T-shirts or blue-checkered dress shirts. He was in fourth grade when he and his older brother arrived undocumented to the United States from Mexico, and he still spoke with a heavy accent, struggling to find words in English as quickly as he wanted to say them. He often switched back and forth between English and Spanish: "Ay ese cabron is talking shit about me; si no se calla le voy a dar en la madre" [Ay, that asshole is talking shit about me; if he doesn't shut up I am going to kick his ass]. Jorge's response to his environment and the stress inflicted on him was to make jokes and witty comments. From his seat at the front of the class, he cracked jokes, chatted with classmates, blurted out random noises, and constantly frustrated the teacher with back talk.

Mark was a Californio (Mexican and indigenous origin) whose family roots could be traced back to California native peoples and the Spanish who arrived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before the United States seized California from Mexico. Mark was proud of his family's heritage ("My great grandma was Chumash [Native American], and all my family has been here way before the gueros [white people] came"), but he also used his deep roots with the land as a point of resistance to the Anglo culture's dominance, disrespect for indigenous and other cultures, and expectations of assimilation and submission to a given role in society. Mark's experience illustrates Riverland's deeply problematic racialized culture in which Latinos are portrayed, described, and visible as either members of a servant class or a criminal class (see chapter 3). The servant class typically includes adult immigrants who work in the tourist and restaurant industries, while the criminal class comprises younger individuals, often second generation and beyond, who are constantly stopped and frisked by police in public and appear almost nightly on the evening news as criminal suspects or perpetrators. Mark, like many of the boys in this study, troubled with the community's treatment of his people, wanted to do something about the problem, but did not know how.

With his hair buzz-cut so short that his pale scalp was visible, Mark sat quietly at the back of the classroom, consistently appearing disgruntled. The administration and faculty had a list of character types, folk categories, used to label students for the sake of everyone's safety and to maintain order: the addict, the emotionally disturbed, the promiscuous chola (gangster girl), the angry cholo, the wannabe (aspiring gangster), and the class clown. The principal selected "the angry type" to describe Mark. He did appear to internalize his frustrations, and eventually he would reach a breaking point and lash out. One day, for example, Mark overheard a male classmate tell a female student, "I think you like Mark; I think you want him to ask you out?"

Mark's light complexion turned slightly red as he clinched his fists together and his face and the back of his head convulsed in anger. He stood up from his desk to confront the other boy: "What you say about me? Don't be putting my name in your stupid fucking words. ... I'm gonna kick your ass after school!"

The classroom security guard, a typical fixture in a school for students considered at risk, swiftly grabbed Mark by the shoulder and marched him outside. Mark did not return for the remainder of class. Later, I noticed him sitting in the principal's office. "We have to give him lots of time to cool down," the security guard said.

Being removed from class was hardly new to Mark, whose disruptive behavior invited institutional reprimand from an early age. White boys displaying similar...