Browse

Substance use and criminal behaviour often go hand in hand, and sexual crimes are no exception. This essay on alcohol and drug use in relation to sexual offending aims to provide a brief overview of the relevant literature on this topic. An important difficulty that arises when discussing the relationship between substance misuse and sexual offending is that both sex offenses and substance misuse are very broadly defined categories. Sex offenses may comprise rape, child molestation, and downloading child pornography, to name a few. The nature of the relationship between substance use and sex offenses may vary for different types of sex offenses.

An ethnographic study of a group of young black men dealing cannabis at a drug scene called The River in Oslo demonstrates that accumulation and use of street capital can be seen as responses to processes of social and economic exclusion. In Norway, as elsewhere, many immigrant youths are marginalized by ethnic discrimination, racism, lack of education and job opportunities, and immigration policy. Street capital is a means to gain respect, status, and money. The concept is inspired by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and highlights how street culture becomes embodied and emphasizes the practical rationality involved when marginalized youths become involved in crime. Street capital is upheld by and embedded in gangster stories, but the young men also see themselves as victims. There are ongoing shifts between gangster- and oppression discourses; neither represents the “true story” of these men. Ethnographic study of street dealers’ language use demonstrates the complex relationship between street culture and a benevolent Nordic welfare state.

Much negative public and media attention in Germany focuses on Muslim immigrants, particularly those with guest worker backgrounds. A study based on 5 years of ethnographic fieldwork with 55 second-generation male Muslim immigrants in Germany who engaged in drug dealing provides major new insights into how they try to make sense of the negative stereotypes of Muslim immigrants prevalent in German society, into distinctive forms of exclusion they face in the public education system, and into the effects on them of a restrictive and unwelcoming naturalization system. The exclusion the young men face significantly limits their opportunities for social and economic success, shapes their opinions about Germany, and provides them with rationales for explaining and legitimizing their drug dealing activities.

High rates of violence are characteristic of many urban drug markets because the individuals therein abide by a set of informal rules known as the code of the street. This code governs interpersonal conduct that emerges from the social circumstances found in various communities in America. Drug market participants who subscribe to this code view violence as a means to earn respect, status, and security. Not all drug markets are urban, how or exhibit high rates of violence, however. This is probably the reason why researchers have focused disproportionately on violent, inner-city drug markets to account for the conditions that facilitate violence in such environments. This article examines why there is a dearth of violence in drug markets in suburbs, focusing on the cultural context in which such markets operate. It first describes a study of twenty-five young suburban drug dealers before looking at the code of the suburb. It also assesses the code's impact on drug dealing, especially in relation to handling victimization, and concludes by highlighting the relevance of peace for understanding violence.

This article analyzes scientific evidence on the effectiveness of strategies aimed at preventing substance use within the community. It considers the potential of community-based devices to reduce drug use among youths, and then describes the methods that can identify various interventions. The next section discusses these interventions and their effects on youth substance use. Finally, the article determines the features of community-based strategies that are most likely to lead to positive outcomes.

This article sets out an analytical framework for thinking about drug use and abuse and about drug policy. It summarizes current knowledge about patterns of drug use and patterns of drug-related harm. It presents an overview of policy responses to drug abuse and trafficking, which includes interdiction and source-country programs, arrest and imprisonment, treatment, and prevention. This article discusses a range of programs and offers a number of proposals—centering on the need to investigate not only the prevalence of drug use but also quantities consumed and harms associated with both drug use and drug policy strategies—for increasing our understanding of current patterns of drug use and of effects of drug policy. It concludes with two trends that have the potential to challenge current cultural assumptions about drugs and drug control.

This article explains why various policies are or are not likely to reduce the amount of crime associated with drugs, by marrying a simple typology of the types of drug-related crime with analysis of how different interventions affect drug markets and drug use. Section I addresses the science half of the literature but forgoes the usual detailed review of the empirical evidence. Section II lays down principles for thinking about the impact of drug-control interventions on drug production, distribution, and use. Section III sketches the main effects one can expect from various alternatives that figure prominently in policy discussions, plus some others that are less discussed but perhaps more promising.

Blacks are arrested on drug charges at more than three times the rate of whites and are sent to prison for drug convictions at ten times the white rate. These disparities cannot be explained by racial patterns of drug crime. They reflect law enforcement decisions to concentrate resources in low income minority neighborhoods. They also reflect deep-rooted racialized concerns, beliefs, and attitudes that shape the nation’s understanding of the “drug problem” and skew the policies chosen to respond to it. Even absent conscious racism in anti-drug policies and practices, “race matters.” The persistence of a war on drugs that disproportionately burdens black Americans testifies to the persistence of structural racism; drug policies are inextricably connected to white efforts to maintain their dominant position in the country’s social hierarchy. Without proof of racist intent, however, US courts can do little. International human rights law, in contrast, call for the elimination of all racial discrimination, even if unaccompanied by racist intent.