Acknowledgments

This work involves different investigations carried out over the last ten years in prisons, poor neighborhoods of Caracas, and illegal economies. For this reason, I cannot but thank those who accompanied me in these investigations, such as Chelina Sepúlveda, Verónica Zubillaga, Iván Pojomovsky, Keymer Ávila, José Luís Fernández-Shaw, Desmond Arias, Benjamin Lessing, Alberto Alvarado, Francisco Sánchez, Rebecca Hanson, Amarylis Hidalgo and Luz Ortiz. Also, I want to thank UNICEF, the Ministerio del Poder Popular para el Servicio Penitenciario, the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF), and the Red de Activismo e Investigación para la Convivencia (Reacin). I thank Ivan Pojomovsky, Jennifer Martinez, and Luis Duno-Gottberg for their comments and suggestions.