NCJ Number
73844
Date Published
1978
Length
243 pages
Annotation
This book used a unique research collaboration between academicians and Chicano ex-convicts and gang members to examine gangs and drugs in Chicano neighborhoods of Los Angeles and to study how the barrios' norms are reflected in California prison culture.
Abstract
Gang members and ex-convicts participated in the design and conduct of the research, a feature expected to nullify the Chicanos' hostility toward researchers. The study focused on three barrios selected because of their immediate relevance to ongoing community projects. The book first examines the persistence and influence of the barrio Chicano youth gangs. Next it follows the growth of heroin and barbiturates use in Chicano neighborhoods and the growth of the markets for those drugs. It considers how barrio norms not only survive among the men of the barrios who go to prison in California but reemerge in the self-help groups created in those prisons. Finally, the study presents the reasons for barrio residents' general optimism about their neighborhoods in relation to three basic factors: the ethnic minority context of Chicanos in Los Angeles; the well-developed institutional system of local, State, and Federal governments; and the barrio economic system, which has much in common with other cities' ghetto economic systems. Barrio residents' adaptation to the simultaneous presence of illegal and legal entitities in their neighborhoods are explored. The book concludes with a discussion of policy implications and recommendations. Included are recommendations for legalization of decriminalization of heroin, adoption of an economic incentive system in State prisons, and improvement of community-based alternatives to existing remedial structures. Tables, chapter notes, an index, an extensive bibliography of about 160 references, and 6 appendixes discussing research methods and additional results are included.