Book Review: Run Baby Run By Nicky Cruz

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Recommended: Positivist and constructionist perspectives on deviance

I chose to do my project on the book Run Baby Run. The book is an autobiography by Nicky Cruz, a Christian minister and former leader of a ruthless and infamous street gang from New York. Nicky describes how he leaves Puerto Rico to live with his brother in New York, leaves his brother to live on his own, and ultimately join the gang that would be his life until his conversion to Christianity.
Before I relate this to the sociological concepts of deviance, I have to give his story so the relations can be fully appreciated. Also, it will help fill up space.
At first, Nicky lives in Puerto Rico with his parents and siblings. His parents, practitioners of spiritism, would mentally abuse him, his mother calling him the son of Satan. Coupled with the rough neighborhood he grew up in, he naturally began to cause trouble.
At one point, he provoked his teacher into subduing him, after which Nicky left to tell his father that his teacher hit him. When his father heard the teacher's side, Nicky was put in a pitch black room filled with pigeons. This would become a regular punishment, and would fuel Nicky's fear and hatred of birds for years. He bought a bb gun and tried to kill as many as he possibly could.
After a while, his parents decided that they had to get Nicky out of the neighborhood. They sent him to live with his brother Frank in New York when he was fifteen. Unfortunately, New York was not any better. In school, he got in fights, beating down anyone that tried to mess with him.
The only time he could do nothing was when kids would swarm in and try to rob him . If he tried to defend himself, the kids' parents would only see a teenager beating up a bunch of kids, and try to defend the kids.
This might all seem like deviance, and...

... middle of paper ...

... officer), and the list goes on.
In his pluralistic society, there was much cause for violence. Simply because he was Puerto Rican, he would be attacked. Until he joined his predominantly Puerto Rican gang, he would usually not have any backup.
Unable to get ahead in school, because of all the violence, he exemplified structural strain, when there's a gap between society's goals, and the means to reach those goals. He robbed a man to pay for his first apartment at fifteen.
In his case, control and opportunity theories apply. Crime was all he knew, and he gladly did what he needed to do when the opportunity presented itself. And sometimes when it didn't.
His infamous reign as president, as a result, was heavily stigmatized, or branded as disgraceful. When he was visited by his brothers, they claimed to be ashamed of being his brothers, and asked that he stopped.

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