Wolf utilizes her vast experience and research to provide a comprehensive account of gang violence and state policy in El Salvador. In her rich, qualitative analysis, Wolf does an excellent job of contextualizing contemporary crime control policy against a broader historical backdrop.
~Choice Reviews
Well-researched, well-written and comprehensive; a measured piece of scholarship, robust and calibrated…It [takes] a quietly devastating approach, unspairing in its critique, unflinching in its analysis and unadorned in its appraisal. After working through these chapters, there are few stones left unturned.
~British Journal of Criminology
[Wolf's] insights will help connect internal and external understandings of criminal group behavior, disabuse scholars and policymakers of their biased analyses, and, ultimately, unlock a vast new area of research.
~Latin American Research Review
Mano Dura demonstrates the merits of an engaged social science. It is a timely study, especially as we continue to observe the dynamic formation of populist authoritarian regimes of various kinds across the Americas – regimes that seem apt to endorse militarized, repressive policies as the preferred means of 'addressing' social problems.
~Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
Mano Dura makes an important contribution to discourse on contemporary El Salvador and its failure to adopt comprehensive gang policy reform. The book also acts as a point of entry for newcomers to Central American studies who are interested in media analysis and public policy, given that Wolf devotes the first half of the book to analyzing El Salvador’s economic history and the media bias in newspaper coverage of gangs...Mano Dura offers critical insight into the enduring legacy of gang policy that fuels government and elite class interests in El Salvador and offers suggestions for how structural issues can begin to be addressed by NGOs and the public.
~Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies
This book significantly contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of the implementation of draconian anti-gang policies in underdeveloped and politically transitional countries.
~Jose Miguel Cruz, Director of research, LACC-FIU, and author of Street Gangs in Central America
Mano Dura provides a new and elevated standard for future analysis of the gang phenomenon throughout El Salvador. Superb research.
~Thomas Bruneau, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Stanford University
