Victor Rios was raised in the ghetto of Oakland, California, in the 1980s and 90s. A previous gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios were able to get away the bleak final result of many of his friends and gained a PhD at Berkeley and came back to his hometown to review how inner-city young Latino and African American males develop their feeling of self amid criminal offense and intense policing. Punished examines the difficult lives of these teenagers, who now encounter punitive policies in their universities, about Punished: Policing the Lives of Dark and Latino Males communities, and a world where they are continuously policed and stigmatized.

Rios followed a group of forty delinquent black and Latino boys for three years. These boys found themselves in a vicious cycle, caught inside a spiral of consequence and incarceration as they had been harassed, profiled, watched, and disciplined at youthful ages, even before that they had dedicated any crimes, eventually leading most of them to satisfy the destiny anticipated of these. But beyond a fatalistic account of these marginalized young men, Rios finds that the very system that criminalizes them and limitations their possibilities, sparks level of resistance and an elevated awareness that motivates some to transform their lives and be productive citizens.