When We Get Out, It's a Matter of Survival

This investigation is an exploratory case study examining the challenges that juvenile offenders in El Salvador face in integrating into their communities after a significant period of confinement. Given the repressive trend to crime prevention in the Central American context, labeling theory was used as a lens to examine how stigmatization challenges youth’s integration. Moreover, the theories of differential association and social learning highlight how incarceration increases likelihood of failed integration through its effect on peer association. The investigation relied primarily on previous research and ethnographic methods including participant observation in a Salvadoran Juvenile confinement center and interviews with professionals and youth. Results indicated that the stigmatization of Salvadoran youth limits opportunities available for the integration of juvenile offenders both within institutions and their communities, and drives youth’s rejection of conventional society. Moreover youth’s incarceration drives differential association with delinquent peers and the social learning consequences thereof. Thus, repression of criminal behavior in the form of stigmatization and policies such as incarceration seem to contribute to youth’s failure to integrate and inadvertently fuel insecurity and the continuous cycle of violence characteristic of El Salvador and the Northern Triangle at-large