Description

Over-Inclusive Gang Enforcement and Urban Resistance: A Comparison Between Two Cities

This article explores gang enforcement tactics, created after the Civil Rights Movement, to suppress gangs and how the Mexican-American community of Denver, Colorado, and Ogden, Utah, responded with accommodation, self-protection, and the creation of new urban activists. The author conducted gang research formally over five years (2001 to 2006) in two Southwestern cities. Durán uses an ethnographic methodology to interview police officers and gang members to unravel the problematic relationship between gang enforcement and urban resistance. Ogden suffered silently against aggressive police enforcement, while Denver directly challenged these abuses by drawing upon the activism of urban street activists.

criminalization, resistance, law, gangs, racism, Southwest, activists, accommodation

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 36, No. 1 (2009): 82-101