Exit If You Can

Jose Miguel Cruz is Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida International University, and author of several books on gangs in Central America.

"Jose Miguel Cruz', Exit if You Can is a much-needed addition to the growing research and policy on gangs, drug distribution and the role of subcultures in Mexican drug sales outside the United States. Specifically, the book focuses on drug distribution and the long-standing conflict among individuals and groups in the Mexican Drug War. As such, the work provides a contribution to methodological issues, sub-cultures, institutional structures and the international structures that facilitate and frustrate groups engaged in gang groups (Secarios). This book should take its place alongside the work from the Eurogang Paradox as well as the ISRD in Europe, in addition to the well as the ongoing work of Charles Katz in building a foundation for policy, theory and interventions. While there is much to learn about the social organization of drug 'wars', Gil creates a foundation for understanding the joining and leaving a drug cartel. One area of great interest is identifying the 'grip of the group' and how it varies from other central and southern American states. Exit if you Can should provide a foundation future work in understanding subcultures in crime, neighborhoods, and other institutions such as prisons, schools, religion and others."-- "Scott H. Decker, co-author of Competing for Control: Gangs and the Social Order of Prisons" "We've all heard the rhetoric. Jose Miguel Cruz delivers the reality. With unrivaled access to the underworld's preeminent folk devils, Exit If You Can offers an unyielding antidote to society's most punitive impulses. This penetrating account of liminality in Central America reveals how the seemingly incorrigible gangsters of today sow the seeds of redemption for tomorrow. Cruz unblinds the field of gang disengagement with theoretical and empirical scaffolding that could have only come from the Global South. An incredible undertaking."-- "David C. Pyrooz, co-author of On Gangs"