Youth control complex

The youth control complex is enacted upon boys of color through a host of institutions, including "schools, families, businesses, residents, mass media, community centers, and the criminal justice system," before they ever commit a potential criminal offense.[1] This system of social control exerts harsh punishments whenever youth fail to follow directions, exerting a zero-tolerance approach from a very young age. As Rios states, "these young people experienced a kind of social death; they were outcasts before they even committed their first offense. This kind of targeting creates a system that metes out brutal symbolic and physical force on young people." The complex is enacted within a racist culture that Rios describes as "obsessed with control."[3]

Within this complex, young people lose themselves because of the violent way in which they are treated. As their everyday behaviors, such as style of dress, become criminalized and treated as deviant. Rios compares the inside experience of the youth control complex to that of a pinball in of a pinball machine.[1] Additionally, Rios notes that the intentions of this complex are ultimately enacted in order to trap youth of color through management, control, and incapacitation, all of which direct them towards incarceration, recidivism, subjugation, exploitation, and death.[2]

Legal scholar Kate Weisburd applies the youth control complex in an analysis of youth electronic monitoring. Weisburd states that electronic monitoring is being enacted by authority figures as a substitute to youth incarceration, who claim that it "effectively rehabilitates," "lowers incarceration rates," and is "cost-effective." However, she finds that there is no empirical evidence to support these claims. Instead, Weisburd determines that electronic monitoring is likely more harmful because it institutes a constant and demanding system of mass surveillance. Monitors must be constantly serviced by youth detainees at all times with the constant threat of incarceration and punishment looming. Weisburd describes how some youth are expected to charge the device daily, remain in their homes unless attending school (otherwise activity would have to be approved 48 hours in advance), and call the electronic monitoring office 3 times per day. Any minor violations result in youth being taken into custody, separated again from their homes and families. This process of separation may occur repeatedly and has intense psychological implications on youth.[5]

In educational institutions, scholar Henry A. Giroux states that Columbine (1999) contributed to the developed of policies and practices of social control in schools: "Rather than giving rise to a concern for young people, Columbine helped to put into place the development of a youth control complex in which crime has become the fundamental axis through which children’s lives are both defined and monitored while the militarization of schools became the order of the day." Giroux states that this heightened practices of treating students like prisoners, and school like prison, especially for youth of color, "who are too often considered as utterly disposable."[4]

There are numerous statistics which illuminate the presence of the youth control complex:

• 95% of all juveniles sent to adult courts (tried as adults) are youth of color.[2]
• In California, youth of color are 2.5 times more likely than white kids to be tried as adults and 8.3 times more likely to be incarcerated by adult courts.[2]
• In 2003, 12% of all Black men in their twenties were incarcerated, and almost 4% of Latino men.[2]
• In states such as California, where the Latino population is much higher, Latino youth make up 60% of the state's juvenile detainees and 36% of the state youth prison population.[2]
• In California, Black youth make up only 7.8% of the state population, yet comprise approximately 30% of the state's juvenile detainees.[2]

Scholars describe how effects of the youth control complex often result in long-term consequences for boys of color. Some psychological implications include the development of extreme anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and different forms of behavioral disorders that are viewed as disruptive.[5] Alex S. Vitale mentions that the complex also "undermines their life chances by driving them into economic and social failure and long-term criminality and incarceration."[6]

As this complex is enacted, Rios notes that youth of color begin to internalize their own criminalization because "they are already seen as suspects by many in the community." As a result, they develop "identities that they often wish they could renounce" and in some cases end up embracing the criminality they are already expected to commit.[2]

For Rios, the youth control complex reveals that there is a "crisis of 'governance'," or a failure on the part of institutions which claim to be for the people, but actually use criminalization to govern and control them. When enacting this system of social control, Rios states that the government becomes "an abusive step-parent figure, beating its children and throwing them in a room with no windows nor doors," normalizing and justifying child abuse in the process.[2]

• Victor Rios on 'the Mis-Education and Criminalization of Black and Latino Boys'