Stick Together and Come Back Home. Patrick Lopez-Aguado
same restrictions. When Rafael, an unaffiliated tagger, went to talk with a friend of his who had just come to the school, he sat with her on one of the tables furthest from the building. The security guard calls for these tables to use the restroom if they need to and Rafael, who usually sits with the Bulldogs on the tables closest to the school building, gets up from the table and starts walking inside. One of the probation officers supervising the break calls after him:
“Rafael! Where are you going?”
“They called bathroom.”
“Aren’t you on this side?” She asks, pointing to the tables closest to the school building.
“I was sitting over there.” He counters, pointing back to the opposite side.
“Don’t be switching sides! If you’re gonna be on that side, you stay on that side!”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, serious. If you gonna go to the bathroom you go when your side is called.”
The probation officer scolds Rafael for not remaining on the side that he usually sits on because his presence on the far tables violates the strict division of physical space. Even though Rafael is not a gang member, staff sees his presence on the “Norteña/o side” as a potential security threat because they associate him with the Bulldogs he usually sits with. To avoid this risk they reprimand him and tell him to “stay on his side,” enforcing the division of students into gang-associated groups. In doing so, the school ascribes gang labels onto students and blurs its ability to distinguish between gang members who may start fights and unaffiliated students.6
The restrooms the students used during breaks were seen as especially vulnerable sites for fighting, making it particularly important for the staff to keep students separated as they came inside to go to the bathroom. Later in the week I sit with Ben again during break, and we watch another student try to head in to use the bathroom out of turn, only to be sent back when the PO yells at him “I didn’t call your side!” We laugh and I say to Ben, “Damn they’re serious about the sides huh?”
Ben smirks and nods, “Yeah.” I tell him about the PO scolding Rafael for switching sides a few days ago, and he explains why they’re so strict about keeping students separated during bathroom breaks: “It’s cuz they don’t want someone sneakin’ over here and then goin’ into the bathroom where they can fight, cuz out here it’ll probably get broken up quick, but in there you could probably fight for longer.”
These efforts to keep students separated in the name of preventing fights extended into where they did their schoolwork as well. Students were not divided in the classroom or split into different classes, but some staff members were concerned about keeping the students that I took out away from potential rivals. The school’s RSP (Resource Specialist Program) teacher and I both pulled students out of their regular classes and worked with them in small groups at the opposite ends of a large room. One day the vice principal, Mrs. Garcia, calls us both into her office. I come in and sit down, and while waiting for the RSP teacher to join us I ask Mrs. Garcia “Is something wrong?”
“Well there’s some concern about you taking out kids from different gangs.”
“Oh, did something happen?”
“This morning there was an incident that was an extension of something [that happened] yesterday after school, so I’ve already suspended 3 students this morning over that. So things are a little tense right now. Our staff has noticed it and asked that I talk with you, because you tend to pull out more Bulldog affiliates, and she gets the few Norteño and Sureño students, and they’re too close to each other. There hasn’t been a problem yet, but the looks have started. It’s all in the body language. And cuz you’re way in the front [of the building], I’m concerned that if there was a problem it would take security a minute to get there, and by then someone could really get hurt.”
As Mrs. Ruiz, the RSP teacher, comes in Mrs. Garcia repeats her concerns to her and goes on to say that she wants us to start working with our students in separate rooms, telling me to use the conference room from now on. Mrs. Ruiz and I look at each other with some confusion, and she turns back to Mrs. Garcia and counters that neither of us have had any problems with our students sharing a room. Indeed, I had never seen either Mrs. Ruiz’s or my own students do anything to try to start a fight while we had them out, and none of our students were involved in the shouting match/verbal provocations that resulted in that morning’s three suspensions. Mrs. Garcia simply responds: “Our staff knows who these kids are and they’ve seen the stares and the looks starting. It may not be swearing or yelling but it’s all in the body language.”
Mrs. Garcia’s concerns articulate an underlying assumption of the prevailing logic at SJEA—differently affiliated youth are bound to fight unless they are separated, so it’s important to properly identify students’ affiliations in order to keep them away from any potential rivals. Even though the students I took out had never given me any problems and had not been involved in any fights at the school, they were still seen as likely to attack others based on which side of the divided student body they associated with. However, the criminalizing associations that supposedly made these students likely to fight were structured, in some cases even forced, by the divisive context imposed by the school—one in which students’ race and class identities, and where in Fresno they were from, shaped how they were subsequently divided and categorized in the institution. Much like the juvenile hall and the prison, the school then relied on the labels it institutionalized to establish a social frame for understanding the young people it managed, creating a “knowledge” of youth criminality that was removed from the actual threat posed by these individuals. The school’s systematic division of students and the relationships it imposed between them actually generated the very threats staff were scared of, as it reinforced students’ identifications with particular affiliations, their fears of other groups, and the institutionalization of the carceral social order.
THE CARCERAL SOCIAL ORDER AS COMMON SENSE
At the beginning of this chapter Javier describes his fear that his incarceration could embroil him in “gang life.” Because he sees most of those around him in JDF as gang affiliated, he worries that acclimating to being locked up will require him to become part of the gang conflicts that shape everyday life in the pod. Javier feels that this is especially true because he sees these gang-involved peers as a surrogate family within a context in which he is removed from his real family. But his real concern is that the consequence of his inability to access substance abuse treatment could keep him cycling though punitive facilities for a long time:
If my mom could have found a rehab that was in-patient, but was out there, she would have sent me to that, but they couldn’t find one. The judge said I needed rehab for my addiction, so he sent me to [JDF’s substance abuse program]. . . . I dunno, I feel like instead of helping me they’re just punishing me by putting me in here. I know I need help with my addiction but I don’t know if the programs in here can really help, I mean taking everyone away from their families, everybody’s always all depressed in there. I wouldn’t care so much if it was just me and I didn’t have a family, but I do have a family, so I don’t belong in here. I feel like I’m just gonna get used to being locked up, like I’ll probably be back in here.
The dearth of resources for poor youth in Fresno and the role of punishment in managing local social problems make the only drug treatment option accessible to Javier one inside the juvenile hall. But in addition to feeling that he is being punished rather than helped, he also senses that this may expose him to a far more permanent penalty; Javier’s adjustment to what is supposed to be a temporary circumstance entails a much more persistent criminalization. Said another way, he knows that adapting to being locked up could very well lead him to continue to get locked up.
Positioning oneself within the carceral social order is a big part of the adjustment and socialization Javier is describing. But it is important to recognize that beyond a set of institutionally defined collective identities, this social order also becomes a common sense framework for understanding who one does and does not get along with within punitive settings. The assumption that different racial groups represented threats