A Foucauldian Analysis of Gang Injunctions

Abstract

Gang injunctions emerged during the 1980s with the expansion of prisons, targeting alleged street gang members and their spaces of association. This essay examines gang injunctions, or street gang restraining orders, in Southern California through a Foucauldian framework. Applying a critical analysis of court documents found at law enforcement agencies and district or city attorney offices, I offer a broad insight into gang injunctions , focusing on the county of San Diego. I argue that gang injunctions are significant: although these injunctions are neutral prima facie or on the face of race and ethnicity, they structurally embody ongoing legacies of criminalizing people of color through mechanisms associated with the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration. Gang injunctions embody the surveillance and disciplinary practices of the panopticon created by power and knowledge within civil society and illustrate biopolitical policies implemented by the state that exclusively target purported alleged street gang members in their communities. As gang injunctions systematically criminalize Latina/o street gangs and their communities, they have detrimental effects on all members as their enforcers are motivated by politics and overactive control over specific geographies. This study proposes that gang injunctions create a direct pipeline from civil society to prison.