Duran, Robert J., Gang Life in Two Cities: An Insider’s Journey

Authors

Robert Donald Weide, New York University

Abstract

"In his newly published book, former gang member and probation officer Robert J. Duran provides both a compelling comparative ethnography of gang life in two middle American cities, Denver, Colorado and Ogden, Utah, as well as a needed critical analysis of both the historical and contemporary roles of colonial oppression and law enforcement practices and policies that have contributed to the formation and perpetuation of gang identities in the barrios of those cities. Although neither cites the other’s work, I think it is fair to cast Duran’s book as a counterpart to Michelle Alexander’s celebrated work The New Jim Crow (Alexander, 2010). While Alexander failed to consider the effect mass criminalization has on Latino communities in the US, Duran provides a beautiful description and critical analysis of just that. However, rather than focus on the war on drugs and a Jim Crowe analogy as Alexander did, Duran relates the history of internal colonialism to the emergence of gang enforcement as a vehicle for continuing the oppression of communities of color in the post-civil rights era. This is an extremely important contribution to the literature not just on Latinos and/or gangs specifically, but to post-colonial theory, critical race theory, and critical criminology perspectives in totum. I can only hope that this significant piece enjoys the prominence that it deserves."

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Weide, Robert Donald (2014) "Duran, Robert J., Gang Life in Two Cities: An Insider’s Journey," Qualitative Criminology (QC): Vol. 2: No. 1, Article 11.
Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/qc/vol2/iss1/11