37 Latinx Criminal Justice Professionals: Exploring Career Motivations

Faculty Mentor: Ed A. Muñoz (Ethnic, Gender & Disability Studies, University of Utah)

My project focused on the experiences, insights, and motivations of Latinx criminal justice professionals in Salt Lake City, Utah. This project has been exciting for me, as it provided an opportunity to work with one of my favorite professors on a project that aligns with my interests. I’ve been attending Dr. Munoz’s classes since I started at the University of Utah, and through each experience, I’ve had the chance to delve deeper into understanding the United States Latino Diaspora. Additionally, through his classes, I’ve had the opportunity to engage with the Latino community here in Salt Lake City. As part of our final projects in class, we were tasked to complete oral history interviews for the Construyendo Latinidad in the Intermountain West archive. Of those interviews, two that I completed, were then selected to be part of the dataset for analysis and inclusion into our digital exhibit project.

Last summer, I’ve had the opportunity to work strictly with quantitative data through a SPUR/HAPPIEST project on the perceptions of air pollution in Salt Lake County, and the transition to working with qualitative data was a significant departure. I’m very grateful to have the chance to work with both quantitative and qualitative datasets, and to have a second chance to work in SPUR, but it was certainly a shift akin to a culture shock. I chose to apply to SPUR again because of the chance to work with qualitative data as it was a gap in my skill set and more importantly for me, a chance to work with Dr. Munoz. I can’t say that I’ve emerged from this experience with a clear preference for either qualitative or quantitative; however, I certainly have a much better appreciation for both methodologies. I’ve learned that qualitative data can be infinitely more nuanced and provides a level of insight that isn’t there in quantitative data. I also appreciate the level of connection between the narrator and the interviewer.

We used oral history interviews that were archived in the Construyendo Latinidad in the Intermountain West Archive. Those interviews were collected through community engaged learning courses held by Dr. Munoz, including class I was enrolled in such as US Latino Diaspora and Criminal Justice and Law. These interviews were collected as our final projects by me and my classmates. By watching the interviews conducted by my classmates, I was able to identify areas where I would have done things differently and where I would have missed out on a vignette that was shared when my peers were in charge. I am also able to contrast the experience with my own as the interviewer. There are parts where I wish I could go back in time and ask a different question, which is better informed by the context of the literature review I conducted.

In particular, the literature review helped me better understand how many demographics and variety was missing in the current research. For example, many articles discussed the experiences of Mexican men in either Law enforcement or ICE careers (Cortez, 2021; Gallardo, 2020a, 2020b; Josiah McC. Heyman & Heyman, 2002). While a valuable contribution to our understanding of Latinx experiences, these articles often left out the experiences of women, other Latinx ethnic groups, and LGBTQ+ experiences. Understanding the gaps helped me construct the exhibit by guiding what experiences were highlighted for each person. The literature review further allowed me to appreciate the value of having another person help conduct the interview, as I know that there are questions I would have never thought to ask. Conducting an interview is great practice; however, reviewing the literature, as well as the interviews has been what has most helped me improve as an interviewer.

What I enjoyed most in this process was how much I was able to achieve in a short period of time. I didn’t think the website would come together as fast or as well as it did. Working with OmekaS was daunting, as I had never built a website or engaged in scientific communication work before, and I found the process initially challenging. OmekaS is a web publishing platform often used by institutions such as libraries to support their digital archival materials. The University of Utah Marriott library often uses it to host its digital exhibits, which this project will soon be part of. The exhibits cover a broad scope of topics, including the history of Black Mormons and oral histories about the Great Salt Lake. These exhibits also served as great inspiration for our exhibit. We hope that with this exhibit we are able to display the incredible stories that our narrators have shared, and to provide increased access for communities that may find an archive daunting to work through.

I am grateful for the support of the University of Utah Marriott Library and the librarians Anna Neatrour and Camri Kohler. Working with Anna and Camri made this whole process a lot easier than it would have been if I had been on my own. What was most helpful was the advice they provided on layout, what was possible to achieve on a website, and what I could accomplish within such a short amount of time. I had the goal in mind of keeping the work accessible to anyone who would engage with it, but I was initially very ambitious about what I wanted to display. It was Anna and Camri who helped me focus on what would be realistic.

Another challenge that I encountered during this process was considering the wishes of our narrators. As part of our process, we strive to have the highest respect for our narrators while still engaging with their interviews as research. It feels as if those goals are intuitive, but I feel that my inexperience in the field made it so that, at times, I felt as if those two goals were not compatible. Additionally, having our narrators be people I had the chance to meet and engage with, rather than just anonymous numbers, added to the pressure. The experience of working on a project like this has certainly helped me focus on skills that I thought I had, but in reality, were underdeveloped.

If I were working on this project alone, I am certain that I would have unintentionally done something that would have violated the goal of respecting our interviewees. I’m thankful to have Dr. Munoz as a mentor, and his research experiences, that I’ve started to get a better understanding of how to navigate the best ways to approach balancing these goals. I now realize that fully developing these skills isn’t something I accomplished during this program, but rather something I will continue to learn throughout my career.

The impact of this research experience on my career goals is immense. Personally, I am interested in the interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary interactions between marginalized segments of Utah’s population and the predominant Anglo-American communities. As a student in the Social Sciences field, I want to be at the forefront of understanding, researching, and analyzing people’s experiences, and I want to do this by participating in research, publishing my findings, and attending graduate school and earning a PhD. Working on research has given me the tools to achieve this goal, as I have gained skills such as proposal writing, budget construction, presenting at conferences, science communication, data management and working with platforms such as OmekaS and SPSS.

Participating in the Summer Program for Undergraduate Research has been a great privilege, and I’m honored I was selected to work with Dr. Munoz. Through this project, I’ve improved and acquired a range of skills, including qualitative data analysis, working with OmekaS, science communication, grant writing, and more. I also have the opportunity to continue this work in the fall through the Office of Undergraduate Research and plan to attend the American Society of Criminology Conference in the fall. Working on this project has opened up the opportunity to study something I am very passionate about, and it continues to provide opportunities to network and connect with the larger academic community.

Bibliography

Cortez, D. (2021). “Latinxs in La Migra: Why They Join and Why It Matters.” Political Research Quarterly, 74(3), 688–702. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920933674

Gallardo, Roberto. 2023. “‘I Don’t Think I Have, But I’ve Heard.’: Examining Perceptions of Race Relations in the Los Angeles Police Department Among Male Mexican-American Police Officers.” Race and Justice, 13(3):370–85. doi:10.1177/2153368720967442.

Gallardo, R. (2020b). “‘To Help La Gente’: Examining Helping People as a Motivation for Becoming an Officer in the Los Angeles Police Department Among Male Mexican American Officers.” Criminal Justice Review, 45(4), 452–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734016820916763

Josiah McC. Heyman, & Heyman, J. McC. (2002). “U.S. Immigration Officers of Mexican Ancestry as Mexican Americans, Citizens, and Immigration Police.” Current Anthropology, 43(3), 479–507. https://doi.org/10.1086/339527