Being crime: Youth violence and criminal identities in Bahia, Brazil

Abstract

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.