Founded in 1980s Los Angeles by Salvadorean war refugees, Mara Salvatrucha (MS or MS-13) is today one of the main street gangs in the United States and northern Central America. In recent years the group has developed a reputation for extreme brutality and, arguably, ties to drug trafficking organisations. Given the gang's reach and ostensibly destructive impact, the first non-fiction narrative by US investigative journalist Samuel Logan clearly engages with a very topical issue. Through the case of Brenda Paz, a Honduran-born teenager who joined MS-13 in the United States and was brutally killed by fellow gang members after having become a federal informant, This is for the Mara Salvatrucha aims to take us into the very heart of the gang. This gripping and highly readable account provides a detailed understanding of Paz's story, which has never been exhaustively covered despite the media attention it received. However, for those hoping to learn more about MS-13, particularly its transformations, the book will be a disappointment. The volume mostly chronicles Paz's brief stint in the gang, her cooperation with the police and especially her inner struggles over her desire to abandon violence but not her friends, and exposes the gang's hidden world in barely three of 54 brief chapters. As the title indicates, Logan argues that MS-13 is the United States' most violent gang, yet his evidence is unpersuasive and testifies to a possible over-reliance on law enforcement sources, which tend to have a narrow view of street gangs. Like many works in the journalistic genre, the book lacks references and makes only brief mention of the use of interviews. This ambiguity raises questions about the ways in which the story was reconstructed, particularly Paz's thoughts and emotions, and makes it impossible to verify its more contentious points.

The book offers some fascinating insights into gang joining and gang life, including the role of females in these groups. Paz, a good student from a humble but caring family, entered MS-13 in search of belonging and attention when her parents' marital problems and her mother's growing mental illness required the girl to live with relatives in Texas. Paz's example shows how easy it is for youths to get into a gang, often unaware of the price they will pay for a semblance of friendship, fun and freedom. For those who believe that street gangs form essentially for criminal purposes, it also constitutes a reminder that these groups serve to fulfil personal needs, some shared, some conflicting, and will not be effectively controlled through policing alone. Logan emphasises the link between the immigrant experience and gang development, but appears to attribute gang joining merely to dysfunctional families and Latino communities when it is largely facilitated by the local socio-economic conditions among marginalised populations, immigrant or not. The author cogently underscores the paradoxes of gang life, a life in which solidarity, excitement and respect coexist with violence, prison and the threat of a premature death. What is particularly striking is the apparent irrationality of some of the killings and the trauma that violence (and the talk of violence) causes among gang members. The intensity of the emotional distress that these youths undergo makes it imperative to help them recover psychologically, a need that rehabilitation programmes often neglect. Similarly, Logan's account endeavours to bring out some of the specifics of female gang affiliation. Paz's testimony makes it painfully clear that girls are subordinate in a macho world to which they are jumped in or sexed in. Many suffer physical abuse, some are pimped, and all are tolerated but never accepted as equals. Nonetheless, female members remain an understudied aspect of the gang phenomenon that deserves much greater scrutiny than it has thus far received.

The volume is at its weakest when it touches on the most controversial characteristics of MS-13. Its author seems to agree that cliques have a formal leader, a position that echoes the law enforcement perspective but contradicts the research on the subject. In the book, MS-13 bosses come to life through physical descriptions of menacing-looking, heavily tattooed youths who dedicate all their time to gang affairs and distinguish themselves through their preparedness to kill. Logan's assertion that one leader's tattoos – an ‘MS’ on the forehead and a teardrop – are ‘hard-earned symbols of status and power’ (p. 36) is factually incorrect, however. Although the teardrop often denotes a homicide and serves police in identifying suspected murderers, gang tattoos generally mean whatever their bearers want them to mean. More importantly, these fearsome individuals are depicted as representative of MS-13, but actually remain the exception. As Logan admits that most members act tough but try to avoid violence, his insistence on labelling the entire gang as violent is puzzling.

Most of what readers will discover about MS-13 is derived from Paz's statements to the police, comprising information on the gang's history, rules, recruitment, expansion, hand signals, organisational structure and criminal activities. Chap. 27, which recounts Paz's videotaped interview to a group of law enforcement officers, is in some ways one of the most intriguing parts of the book, although Logan reproduces much of this data rather uncritically. Indeed, he introduces MS-13 early on as a group of irresponsible, violent and delinquent youths who regularly extort poor, hardworking people. While there is some truth to this image, it is unnuanced and exaggerated. Logan largely ascribes the gang's US-wide expansion to the recruitment drive of individual members, including one who reportedly distributed business cards to aid this effort. The research literature indicates, however, that while individual gang migration is extensive, it generally occurs for social reasons, notably parental relocation, and to a lesser extent to escape law enforcement crackdowns or to find employment. Equally, the volume glosses over the role of community conditions, the copycat phenomenon and gang polices in the proliferation of MS-13. More surprisingly, the book is silent on the gang's growth in Central America, where its impact is much more destructive. The violent and criminal nature of MS-13 is generalised from a few spectacularly brutal incidents, often described in chilling detail, and some police detectives' ‘knowledge’ that the gang is vicious and organised. Logan admits that the gang's criminal evolution remains a mystery; nonetheless, his portrayal of MS-13 overstates the level of members' delinquent and violent behaviour and wrongly associates the acts of some youths with the entire group. Furthermore, Logan fails to consider the extent to which sensationalist media coverage and the gang's emergence in quiet, rural towns has helped inflate the MS-13 threat.

Throughout his work Logan addresses, with mixed success, gang withdrawal and gang control. He narrates a powerful tale of a teenager worn out by violence and the constant pressure to prove her loyalty to the group, yet wrestling with the pull between a gang-free future and her affection for her friends. Paz's case shows that leaving the gang is a complicated process and requires the support of individuals, such as her defence attorney, who are extremely committed to helping gang members return to a more conventional lifestyle. Curiously, however, Logan concludes that these youths are ‘able to leave the gang just as easily as they arrived’ (p. 244). Perhaps wanting to end on a positive note, he risks sounding naive. For many gang members, renouncing their friendships and support network is no simple task, and many are killed by their peers, who resent being abandoned. Finally, the author is rather uncritical of current gang policies. Logan questions neither law enforcement attempts to dismantle MS-13 as an organised crime group nor the paucity of prevention/rehabilitation programmes. Indeed, his implicit support for alternative strategies seems to conflict with his portrayal of MS-13 as a criminal organisation.

This journalistic piece makes for an enjoyable read, but reveals much less about MS-13 than the title promises. It leaves some of the most hotly debated questions unresolved and paints the gang as more influential and terrifying than it is. Logan's core argument represents the most troubling facet of the volume, given its inaccuracy and its potential for strengthening existing gang stereotypes and prejudices. The book was originally written to expose the harmful consequences of gang life and deter at-risk youths from joining one of these groups, but to marginalised youngsters, for whom the prospect of fun, respect and status is powerful stuff, this warning may well be a doubtful deterrent. Logan's work will be of interest both to the wider public and to students of the Central American gangs, but above all it should find an attentive audience among policymakers who have yet to recognise, after decades of failed anti-gang efforts, that resources need to be invested in young people, not more uniforms, squad cars and weapons.