ABSTRACT
Using original insights coming from an empirical study inside the juvenile prison facilities in the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras), the chapter focuses on the incarceration of gangs in Central America and the forced relationship between two complex organisations, the state and its punitive apparatus on one side and the gangs, probably the most powerful non-state actor of Central America, on the other. The research moves from the assumption that street and prison are becoming synonymous environments within the contemporary societies. As suggested by Wacquant, prison and urban ghetto have meshed into a “carceral continuum” whereby the two institutions resemble each other, forming the so-called hyper-ghetto. Gang members bring inside the walls of prison not only their habitus, organisation, leadership, hierarchy and symbols, but they are transforming imprisonment into act of resistance, a ‘political’ collective experience, where gangs (through their leaders) experiment with relations with the public authority, sometimes negotiating with the institutions, more frequently in total contrast. From a theoretical point of view, the research suggests that critical criminology should strictly connect gang studies to prisons studies to improve new streams of research.
