Book Review: Stick Together and Come Back Home: Racial Sorting and the Spillover of Carceral Identity by P. Lopez-Aguado

• Published date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567718795024
• Date: 01 March 2022
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

used “parsimoniously”(p. 317) and call for more humane conditions of confinement for those

serving life sentences (p. 319). Even within a more limited framework in which life imprisonment

remains a sentencing option, the authors raise compelling arguments about why all countries, and

the United States, in particular, should severely limit the use of life sentences. To that end, this

book should be required reading for punishment scholars, policy makers, human rights advocates,

criminal justice reformers, and students interested in comparative law and punishment.

ORCID iD

Jessica S. Henry https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1572-9887

Lopez-Aguado, P. 2018.

Stick Together and Come Back Home: Racial Sorting and the Spillover of Carceral Identity. Oakland: University of

California Press. 226 pp. $29.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-520-28859-1.

Reviewed by: Jennifer M. Ortiz, Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, IN, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567718795024

In Stick Together and Come Back Home, sociologist Patrick Lopez-Aguado explores how concen-

trated mass incarceration coupled with correctional policies that sort inmates by race results in the

development of a carceral identity that migrates into communities and is passed down by generations.

Using extensive ethnography research, including years of participant observation and 79 in-depth

semistructured interviews, conducted at three sites in Fresno, CA—an alternative high school, a juve-

nile detention facility, and a nonprofit adult reentry organization—Lopez-Aguado presents a compel-

ling argument regarding the impact of carceral identities on youth and communities of color. The

practice of racially sorting inmates mandates adherence to the carceral social order, which requires

racial allegiance to ensure individual safety. Because California prison gangs have historically been

race-based organizations, the correctional system uses one’s allegiance to their race to “validate”the

individual as a gang member. When inmates are released, their new label is used to justify harassment

by law enforcement. Released individuals subsequently cycle in and out of correctional facilities.

Consequently, society and the criminal justice system use this cycling as “proof”that communities

of color are inherently criminal, and warrant continued social control via criminal justice mecha-

nisms. In short, by using race as a proxy for dangerousness, the criminal justice system creates a self-

perpetuating prophecy that ensures “mass incarceration is able to perpetuate itself”(p. 198).

In Chapter 1, the author explores how the criminal affiliations used to segregate and target indi-

viduals emerge. He explicates that individuals entering prison in California are sorted based on race

and neighborhood of residence, forcing them to participate in existing prison politics, which the

administration subsequently uses as proof of gang membership. Racial sorting also occurs in the

alternative high school where students are often misidentified as gang members and are forbidden

from associating with perceived rivals. Forced participation in raced-based politics, both in prison

and outside, leads to the use of violence to maintain these institutionally created boundaries.

“Placing people into a segregated system makes them appear as ‘naturally’racist, violent, territorial,

or irrationally invested in gangs”(p. 50).

In Chapter 2, the author explores how individuals understand the carceral social order and how it

impacts their individual identities. Residents of Fresno’s marginalized communities often hold strong

neighborhood affiliations, which provide institutionalized individuals with protection from violence.

The criminal justice system incorrectly views neighborhood pride and allegiance as gang affiliation

and uses allegiances to justify segregation. Forced segregation impacts individual identity construc-

tion. “Understanding this perspective can help us recognize that young people adopt criminalized

116 International Criminal Justice Review 32(1)