Book review: Susan A Phillips, Operation Fly Trap: L.A. Gangs, Drugs, and the Law and Elana Zilberg, Space of Detention: The Making of a Transnational Gang Crisis between Los Angeles and San Salvador
| Author | Steve Herbert |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480612462769 |
| Published date | 01 February 2013 |
| Date | 01 February 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
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a new analytical dimension when unearthing relationships between surveillance
technologies, inequality, and democracy, and in this way moves that literature forward.
Her provocative questioning of taken-for-granted assumptions, for example, about the
increased efficiency and cost effectiveness of moving from analog to digital surveillance
technologies is an important contribution. To be sure, in places in the chapters on border
practices and representation in particular, I would have welcomed more empirical atten-
tion to actual effects, although this is often difficult to achieve due to limited access and
may still be coming in the author’s future studies. Overall, Magnet’s critique of biometric
discourse and technologies is penetrating, relentless and often devastating. This is an
enlightening, exquisitely critical book that should be required reading as much for neo-
liberal policy-makers considering quick-fix technological solutions to systemic social
and crime control problems as for students and scholars of criminology.
Reference
Lippert RK and Stenson K (2010) Advancing governmentality studies: Lessons from social
constructionism. Theoretical Criminology 14(4): 473–494.
Susan A Phillips, Operation Fly Trap: L.A. Gangs, Drugs, and the Law, University of Chicago Press: Chi-
cago, 2012; 178 pp.: 226667669
Elana Zilberg, Space of Detention: The Making of a Transnational Gang Crisis between Los Angeles and
San Salvador, Duke University Press: Durham, NC, 2011; 344 pp.: 9780822347309
Reviewed by: Steve Herbert, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington USA
It is easy for American politicians and law enforcement officials to vilify gangs.
Concerns about wanton violence and prolific drug trafficking are now well entrenched
in the public imagination about gangs, and are easily mobilized by those who tout
repressive measures. That gangs are commonly populated by racial or ethnic minorities
makes the circulation of such fears all the more rapid.
It is often a very short step from moral panics about gangs to the stated need to ‘get
tough’. Given the scourge that gangs are said to represent, their eradication seems neces-
sary. Yet little time is typically spent investigating just what transpires when law enforce-
ment seeks to crack down on gangs. Are violence and drug trafficking reduced? Are the
‘kingpins’ commonly detained? Are dynamics within gangs and their neighborhoods
fundamentally improved? What is actually achieved?
Both Susan Phillips and Elana Zilberg pursue answers to such questions. Each relies
on a large body of qualitative data, collected...
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