Luis Barrios

The 1996 U.S. Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act has led to the forcible deportation of more than thirty thousand Dominicans from the United States, with little protest or even notice from the public. Deportees suffer greatly when they are torn from their American families and social networks, and they may be unwelcome in their former homeland. Following thousands of Dominican deportees over a seven-year period, Brotherton and Barrios capture their experience and conclude that a simultaneous process of cultural inclusion and socioeconomic exclusion best explains the trajectory of emigration, settlement, and rejection. Combining sociological and criminological reasoning, the authors isolate the forces that motivate immigrants to leave their homeland and then commit crimes in the United States. They relate the modern deportee's journey to broader theoretical studies of transnationalism, assimilation, and social control. 

This book chronicles the self-transformation of the New York City gang, Almighty Latin Kings and Queen Nation, one of the most feared U.S. gangs, into a social movement acting on behalf of the dispossessed, renouncing violence and the underground economy, and requiring school attendance for membership. Based on inside information-new and never-before-published material by and about the gang, and interviews with 100 gang members-Brotherton and Barrios craft a unique portrait of the lives of these gang members and a ground-breaking study of their evolution. 

Gangs and Society brings together the work of academics, activists, and community leaders to examine the many functions and faces of gangs today, covering the spread of gangs from New York to Texas to the West Coast. Fifteen timely essays represent an eclectic range of topics, such as the spirituality of gangs, the place of women in gang culture, and the effect on gangs of a variety of educational programs and services for at-risk youth. The final chapter, featuring a photographic essay by award-winning journalist Donna DeCesare, examines the gang-photography phenomenon.  Gangs and Society is edited by Louis Kontos, associate professor of sociology at Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus; David C. Brotherton; and Luis Barrios.