The biography and background of the researcher are important to ethnographic research. The researcher is the tool by which information is initiated, gathered, and analyzed.1 As a Chicano from a working-class background, with greater family predictions to enter an institution of incarceration rather than higher education (four of my five brothers have been imprisoned at some point in their lives), gangs and drug markets became a part of my young life. College provided an alternative, as did employment in juvenile justice and community advocacy groups, where I could begin to give back to the community and carve a path to mainstream respectability. Thus, the goal of trying to fit in with a society that has historically demonized a particular population (Mexicans) while simultaneously asserting that they should achieve equal participation in the United States is a contradictory challenge. Research data show improved inclusion, but things are definitely not equal, and thus as a Chicano I have attempted to utilize the investigatory tools of field work, interviews, archival research, juvenile probation files, and other forms of officially collected data to lay out the insights obtained.
Fieldwork
One of the primary components of my research is fieldwork, or participant observation. Jorgensen states, “The methodology of participant observation seeks to uncover, make accessible, and reveal the meanings (realities) people use to make sense out of their daily lives.”2 The goal is to empirically observe what people do rather than what they say they do. While I was attentive to issues of social injustice, this form of research stresses maintaining emotional distance from the participants until after the study is completed. The presumption is that such closeness may damage the qualitative reliability and validity of the study. However, rather than distancing myself from my “key partners,” I sought to use my insider status to enhance rapport. Professors Adler and Adler argued that there are many types of membership roles when conducting ethnographic research: the greatest level of commitment on the part of the researcher involves the complete membership role.3 These scholars reported, “We believe that the native experience does not destroy but, rather, enhances the data-gathering process. Data gathering does not occur only through the detached observational role, but through the subjectively immersed role as well.”4 One variant of the complete membership role is gaining access opportunistically—in other words, using the sociological imagination and turning it inward to reflect upon the researcher’s unique historical and biographical experiences.5 These efforts merge into analytic autoethnography, which differs from evocative ethnography because the empirical world remains central to the data collection process.6
My ethnographic observations began in Doña Ana and El Paso in 2007 and continued throughout this project in 2014. I visited the various communities of Anthony, Berino, Chaparral, Deming, Doña Ana, El Paso, Hatch, Las Cruces, Lordsburg, Silver City, and Sunland Park as part of the research that coincided with my student courses focused on gangs and when I was invited to speak or learn more about various institutions in the region. My ethnographic observations were more intensive in District Six (Grant, Hidalgo, and Luna Counties) from September 2011 to August 2012. I also participated in a six-week Border Patrol Citizens Academy, where I learned more about border enforcement. Each week was organized into a particular theme, such as border observations, immigration detention centers, bike and dog patrols, SWAT, technology, and immigration and custom inspection laws, culminating in a graduation ceremony at the Border Patrol Museum. I also served as a volunteer member of the Wellness and Promotion Team at Gadsden Middle School located in Anthony, New Mexico. I had the opportunity to visit Southern Correctional Facility through a student connection and Rogelio Sanchez State Jail as a speaker in a scared-straight program. I visited schools, alternative schools, and detention centers. I felt welcomed by most the institutions I had the opportunity to visit, due primarily to my status as college professor in criminal justice and my family ancestry being from New Mexico.
A second major component of my data-gathering efforts included conducting interviews.
Unstructured and semi-structured interviews along with several focus groups with practitioners began in 2007 and continued until 2014. Bernard stated that researchers should use unstructured interviews based on a clear plan but with the goal of getting individuals to share their thoughts, and with an opportunity to talk over an extended period.7 Semi-structured interviews followed an interview guide and was based on the possibility of a one-time interview. I interviewed a total of seventy-six individuals, of whom nineteen were key members in the fields of law enforcement, sixteen worked in K–12 education, twelve worked in juvenile probation, and twenty-two were part of the overall juvenile services workgroups including district attorneys, judges, directors of prevention programs, city and county managers, social workers, and corrections personnel. In addition, I interviewed seven highly engaged, long-term community members. I took handwritten notes during each interview, and interviewees determined the use of a voice recorder. Interviews lasted anywhere from forty-five minutes to two hours. All handwritten notes and tape-recorded transcriptions were entered into a Microsoft Word document. The key participants were diverse in terms of race and ethnicity: forty-eight were Hispanic, twenty-seven were white, and one was black. In terms of gender, twenty-nine participants were female, and forty-seven were male. My interviews were conducted primarily in English, although I understand an intermediate level of Spanish, which allowed some conversations to occur in both languages. Observations and conversations with law enforcement involved federal, state, county, and local law enforcement officers. Formal interviews with juveniles did not receive institutional review board approval, thus field notes, informal conversations, and my parenting of several K–12 children captured some of these experiences.
Archival Research
Gathering historical information was made possible through libraries in Las Cruces and El Paso. The El Paso Library had several folders regarding the history of gangs in the area, and I supplemented this information with Newsbank Access World News for after the 1990s. The University of Texas at El Paso Institute of Oral History was also of great value.
Juvenile Probation Files
The random sample of eight-two juvenile probation cases consisted of sixty-six (80 percent) Hispanic/Latino juveniles, eight (10 percent) white juveniles, six (7 percent) other/mixed youth, one African American juvenile, and one Asian juvenile. Sixty-three (77 percent) were male; nineteen (23 percent) were female. The random sample of eighty-two cases was generated from a census of 412 probation case files using Microsoft Excel software. Due to one or two missing files, my colleague Carlos Posadas and I decided to generate additional random numbers to achieve the 20 percent quota of eighty-two probationers established for case reviews. This random sample consisted of 20 percent of the census of probation cases and is satisfactory for making applicable inferences. The referral history covered the years of 1999 to 2010 for a total of 716 referrals, of which 494 were separate incidents. The major characteristics analyzed included race and ethnicity, gender, gang affiliation, age at first offense, drug use or abuse, domestic violence and disruptive home, most serious offense, total charges, socio-economic status, police report, source of referral, and mental history.
The Juvenile Probation and Parole Office files for this report were primarily evaluated qualitatively by pulling specific themes from each file to create a complete family, social, and delinquency history of each probationer. With the assistance of the Juvenile Probation and Parole Office in Doña Ana County, researchers were granted a work area at the probation office to review the case files. Reliability was increased by comparing separately collected data sets of the same cases, noting discrepancies, resolving each discrepancy, and agreeing on the proper coding of each item. After completing the data collection, Carlos Posadas and I entered the data into a Microsoft Excel file. The data were scrubbed and verified through checks for data-entry errors and reliability by comparing the data entered by each of the two researchers. Frequencies were run on the variables identified as the most crucial, such as juvenile characteristics, family characteristics, delinquency history of the juvenile, referral patterns, and some characteristics of the juvenile justice system.
Primary and secondary sources of data were obtained from law enforcement agencies, schools, state juvenile justice centers, technical reports, pamphlets, and the Neighborhood Change Database 1970–2010 Tract Data developed by Geolytics. I was given access to official statistics through the Family Automated Client Tracking System (FACTS) for the years of 2002 to 2008. The data were collected and housed in the state of New Mexico by the state’s Children Youth and Families Department (CYFD) agency. I also accessed the DMC web-based data entry system.