As I slowly moved into a healthier mindset as a young adult, I began to learn that the best way to connect with people struggling with the same challenges was to open up, to tell my story and to expose my past-even if it meant showing some vulnerability and weakness. This process allowed me to gain trust in others, as others also started trusting me. Trust is an essential component of the healing process. When you trust the right people, those that lookout for your well-being, you are no longer alone in the universe.

I have found that telling my story on stage comes at a cost of feeling weak, vulnerable, criticized, ridiculed and exposed but the outcome of inspiring others, creating a healing process, and building human connection is worth the sacrifice. Hurt people, hurt people and healed people, heal people. You never know, telling ones stories may even change the world by inspiring others to start the individual and collective healing process.

The work of supporting the lives of young people who experience struggle has allowed me to go from sleepless nights to more fruitful days. This is what I have dedicated my professional career to. To paraphrase the writer, David Viscott, the purpose of life is to discover your gift and the meaning of life is to give it away. I am living my purpose-to leverage resources for young people growing up far-from-opportunity-and I hope this book helps readers get one step closer to finding and sharing their own gifts.

Honorable Mention, 2014 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of Social Problems

2012 Best Book Award, Latino/a Sociology Section, presented by the American Sociological Association

2012 Finalist, C. Wright Mills Book Award presented by the Study of Social Problems

A classic ethnography that reveals how urban police criminalize black and Latino boys

Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California in the 1980s and 90s. A former gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios managed to escape the bleak outcome of many of his friends and earned a PhD at Berkeley and returned to his hometown to study how inner city young Latino and African American boys develop their sense of self in the midst of crime and intense policing. Punished examines the difficult lives of these young men, who now face punitive policies in their schools, communities, and a world where they are constantly policed and stigmatized.

Rios followed a group of forty delinquent Black and Latino boys for three years. These boys found themselves in a vicious cycle, caught in a spiral of punishment and incarceration as they were harassed, profiled, watched, and disciplined at young ages, even before they had committed any crimes, eventually leading many of them to fulfill the destiny expected of them. But beyond a fatalistic account of these marginalized young men, Rios finds that the very system that criminalizes them and limits their opportunities, sparks resistance and a raised consciousness that motivates some to transform their lives and become productive citizens. Ultimately, he argues that by understanding the lives of the young men who are criminalized and pipelined through the criminal justice system, we can begin to develop empathic solutions which support these young men in their development and to eliminate the culture of punishment that has become an overbearing part of their everyday lives.

At fifteen, Victor Rios found himself a human target--flat on his ass amid a hail of shotgun fire, desperate for money and a place on the street. Faced with the choice of escalating a drug turf war or eking out a living elsewhere, he turned to a teacher, who mentored him and helped him find a job at an auto shop. That job would alter the course of his whole life--putting him on the road to college and eventually a PhD. Now, Rios is a rising star, hailed for his work studying the lives of African American and Latino youth.

In Human Targets, Rios takes us to the streets of California, where we encounter young men who find themselves in much the same situation as fifteen-year-old Victor. We follow young gang members into schools, homes, community organizations, and detention facilities, watch them interact with police, grow up to become fathers, get jobs, get rap sheets--and in some cases get killed. What is it that sets apart young people like Rios who succeed and survive from the ones who don't? Rios makes a powerful case that the traditional good kid/bad kid, street kid/decent kid dichotomy is much too simplistic, arguing instead that authorities and institutions help create these identities--and that they can play an instrumental role in providing young people with the resources for shifting between roles. In Rios's account, to be a poor Latino youth is to be a human target--victimized and considered an enemy by others, viewed as a threat to law enforcement and schools, and burdened by stigma, disrepute, and punishment. That has to change.

This is not another sensationalistic account of gang bangers. Instead, the book is a powerful look at how authority figures succeed--and fail--at seeing the multi-faceted identities of at-risk youths, youths who succeed--and fail--at demonstrating to the system that they are ready to change their lives. In our post-Ferguson era, Human Targets is essential reading.

Honorable Mention, 2014 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of Social Problems

2012 Best Book Award, Latino/a Sociology Section, presented by the American Sociological Association

2012 Finalist, C. Wright Mills Book Award presented by the Study of Social Problems

A classic ethnography that reveals how urban police criminalize black and Latino boys

Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California in the 1980s and 90s. A former gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios managed to escape the bleak outcome of many of his friends and earned a PhD at Berkeley and returned to his hometown to study how inner city young Latino and African American boys develop their sense of self in the midst of crime and intense policing. Punished examines the difficult lives of these young men, who now face punitive policies in their schools, communities, and a world where they are constantly policed and stigmatized.

Rios followed a group of forty delinquent Black and Latino boys for three years. These boys found themselves in a vicious cycle, caught in a spiral of punishment and incarceration as they were harassed, profiled, watched, and disciplined at young ages, even before they had committed any crimes, eventually leading many of them to fulfill the destiny expected of them. But beyond a fatalistic account of these marginalized young men, Rios finds that the very system that criminalizes them and limits their opportunities, sparks resistance and a raised consciousness that motivates some to transform their lives and become productive citizens. Ultimately, he argues that by understanding the lives of the young men who are criminalized and pipelined through the criminal justice system, we can begin to develop empathic solutions which support these young men in their development and to eliminate the culture of punishment that has become an overbearing part of their everyday lives.