The Saints and Roughnecks: Labeling theory, Race, and Juvenile gangs
Haylee Whitney
The first article i read was about eight young men “The Saints” who went to
Hanibal High School, and also another group of six men who called themselves the
“Roughnecks” who went to Hanibal High School as well. For the original 8 men
they “sold oats”, which refers to selling drugs or marijuana. The
“Roughnecks” were always in trouble with the police and people in there
community due to their rate of delinquency. This article studies these two groups
of people to see how they turn out and to study labeling theory.
The saint’s daily concern was just getting out of school at all costs! The
most common and safe procedure for them to take to get out of school was for one
person initially to fabricate a lie to get them out of class, say he’s in chemistry at 9
and he raises his hand and says he has to go to the bathroom. He then leaves and
goes into a different one of the saints classrooms and tell the teacher that the next
kid has to go to a “rehearsal”, and then all the way down the line until as many of
the saints as they can get out of school are out of school. From there they sneak to
their car which has been strategically parked, and they leave for a day of fun. For
almost two years the saints were observed, and this happened almost everyday like
clockwork. But rarely all 8 of the saints got to leave at the same time, the average
amount that got to leave a day was five. When they left school they would go to a
local pool hall or a local cafe, safe from being seen by anyone who knows they
they all should be in school! When they were in the cafe they would raise hell and
do things like break glasses, or spill soda, or putting salt in the sugar bowls, or just
teasing the workers in general. On the weekends the saints would go into a town
called Big Town. they would all meet up on a friday night and go into Big Town.
activities that the partook in while in Big Town included drinking heavily in
taverns, driving drunk, doing vandalism, and pranking people they saw! By
midnight on a friday or a saturday, all the saint were thoroughly high and at least a
couple of them were so drunk that they had to be carried to their cars. They would
then drive around town yelling out the windows to girls and playing chicken. They
would oftentimes even play this game with police where the ride slowly beside
them asking them for directions to a street and if the police officer would lean in
the car to tell them they would speed away causing the officer to lose his balance.
They were careful with this game because they knew it would be easy to just take a
license plate number down. Lastly, another game they thought was funny was
taking all the construction stuff off of big holes in the road and putting them in
their car so that other motorists drive into the holes that are supposed to be blocked
off. They would sit and wait and see people drive into the holes and then go talk to
t...
