Book review: Alan Norrie, Justice and the Slaughter Bench
| Author | Craig Reeves |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617751298 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
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to adopt a “synthesized masculinity”. This refers to a strategic messing of various forms
of masculinity that allows youth to creatively achieve a sense of manhood. This shows the
complexity of performing masculinity and how not all marginalized men resort to com-
pensatory gender performance. These findings also show how institutional actors can
encourage negative forms of gender performance in the community.
Overall, Human Targets provides a deep, rigorous, and theoretically sound depiction
of Latino youth in southern California. Rios is insightfully able to shed light on how
intersecting identities and the historical marginalization of Latino/as in Riverland influ-
ences the criminalization of these youth. This text helps to dismiss a few popular miscon-
ceptions about gang-associated youth. First, Rios demonstrates how the youth in his
study consider cholo identity a temporary phase in their development and not a perma-
nent lifestyle. Second, adopting this style is directly connected to limited economic
resources available to these youths. In other words, buying work pants, cheaply made big
shirts and shaving your head is inexpensive. Finally, these youth are willing to leave
“gang” life for reasonable hourly pay ($12 an hour). Additionally, mistreatment by
police, teachers, community members, and school officials encourages youth to cling to
“cholo” identity. In many ways, this story is all too familiar to social scientists: a lack of
resources, general mistreatment, and little possibility for mobility in the formal sector
lead to the creation and retention of a “deviant” identity. While this message is familiar,
Rios’ “multiple frames” approach to ethnography provides a dynamic format for study-
ing this phenomenon. This approach also helps advance traditional ethnographic research
methods in innovative ways. Moving forward, researchers should consider ways to con-
tinue expanding ethnographic methods to incorporate new forms of media like twitter,
video, and real time steaming. Scholars should also consider how the forms of oppres-
sion described in this book are a part of continued historical forms of state sponsored
violence.
Alan Norrie, Justice and the Slaughter Bench, Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon, 2017; 224 pp.:
1138955116, £36.99 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Craig Reeves, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Our practice of criminal law is a deeply inadequate attempt to judge, a putatively ethical
institution in an unethical social world, torn between its aspiration to judge justly and its
function of coordinating social unjustice. But it does attempt to deal with real and deep
problems of ethical judgment, and can be grasped only by apprehending the internal
dynamics of law’s struggle to judge appropriately, the deeper nature...
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