Being crime: Youth violence and criminal identities in Bahia, Brazil
Being crime: Youth violence and criminal identities in Bahia, Brazil
Ethnography, Ahead of Print.
In Brazil, a growing number of young citizens from the socioeconomic periphery embark on a career in crime, earning their living by armed robbery or selling drugs. Through the life stories and narratives of inmates of a juvenile prison in the state of Bahia, the article anatomizes what makes these young men take up and stick to a life in conflict with the law, despite the limited profits and substantial hardships involved. I argue that the experience of violence, both suffered and perpetrated, is central to the forging of the youths’ criminal identities, and their persistent failure to change their life trajectories.
In Brazil, a growing number of young citizens from the socioeconomic periphery embark on a career in crime, earning their living by armed robbery or selling drugs. Through the life stories and narratives of inmates of a juvenile prison in the state of Bahia, the article anatomizes what makes these young men take up and stick to a life in conflict with the law, despite the limited profits and substantial hardships involved. I argue that the experience of violence, both suffered and perpetrated, is central to the forging of the youths’ criminal identities, and their persistent failure to change their life trajectories.