"Prison Is for Young People!" Youth, violence, and the state in Praia and Mindelo, Cape Verde

Abstract

In the past decade Cape Verde has seen an unexpected outburst of gang-related urban violence. The state has reacted mainly by means of a repressive securitization policy, which has not been able to offer more than temporary solutions. In public discourses, broken families, youth drug consumption, and a supposed lack of education and sufficiently severe punishment are often referred to as the main causes for the rise in crime. The article discusses such discourses, contrasting them with the experiences and narratives of inmates from the country's two central prisons. It suggests that extrajudicial punishment of suspects and offenders by police officers, as reported by many juvenile convicts, is part of the dynamics of violence manifest in different spheres of Cape Verdean society and may be a possible factor influencing the decision of young citizens to opt for, or stick to, careers of marginality and delinquency.