I came across a report on NBC Chicago about the fact that the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are planning to sink $7 million dollars into new security cameras. In order to understand the insanity of this proposal, you need to realize that CPS has a $612 million dollar budget deficit and has already laid off 100 teachers at the end of June with more layoffs planned in the next school year. The priorities of the school system seem to be warped. However upon deeper reflection, you might actually reconsider this view. In Chicago and in many cities across the U.S., it has become more important to criminalize youth than to actually educate them. Understanding the CPS proposal within that context makes it much more rational.

I am in the process of reading a new book by sociologist Victor Rios titled “Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys.” Rios’s thesis is that “criminalization was a central, pervasive and ubiquitous phenomenon that impacted the everyday lives of the young people [he] studied in Oakland.” He adds:

“By the time they formally entered the penal system, many of these young men were already caught up in a spiral of hypercriminalization and punishment. The cycle began before their first arrest — it began as they were harassed, profiled, watched, and disciplined at young ages, before they had committed any crimes. Eventually, that kind of attention led many of them to fulfill the destiny expected of them.”

Rios defines hypercriminalization as “the process by which an individual’s everyday behaviors and styles become ubiquitously treated as deviant, risky, threatening, or criminal, across social contexts.” It is easy to see the cameras in schools as another part of what Rios calls the “youth control complex.” That complex is defined as “a system in which schools, police, probation officers, families, community centers, the media, businesses, and other institutions systemically treat young people’s everyday behaviors as criminal activity.”

For those who have been regularly reading this blog, you know that I have been making arguments similiar to the ones offered by Rios from the inception of Prison Culture. I argued in a post about Biggie Smalls’ Ready to Die album that youth of color are automatically suspect and inscribed with the identity of “criminal.” An identity which they do not have the option to put on and take off at will. I made a similar argument about the criminalization of youth identity through laws prohibiting sagging pants and so on and so forth. I look forward to continuing to read Rios’s book which is a great introduction for anyone who is interested in better understanding the process of youth criminalization in 21st century America.

For those who are interested in more readings about the criminalization of youth, I refer you to a reading list that I offered here a few months ago on the topic.