Becoming a drug dealer on the streets of Chicago neither serves to increase one’s life expectancy nor helps to gain some goodwill from the neighborhood police department. But then why do people want to make a living out of dealing cocaine? The reason for such a life choice is because of incentives. The incentive people respond to in this case is money. Cocaine dealers configure their whole identity around crime, gang affiliations, and drugs because of money. A crack dealer and a gang boss to most people does not seem like a glamorous profession; however, for people growing up in poverty stricken neighborhoods, drug dealing and gang ties look to be rather lucrative ventures.
“Gangs have morphed from social organizations into full-fledged criminal enterprises” (Thomas, 2009, para 5). Gangs are highly sophisticated and more dangerous then ever. The number one reason to join a gang is money; and 95 percent of gangs profit comes from drug dealing
Lee D. Hoffer’s “Junkie Business: The Evolution and Operation of a Heroin Dealing Network” is an ethnography that details the buying and dealing of the highly addictive drug, heroin, in the particularly homeless area of Denver, Colorado called “Larimer” from 1995 to the year 2000. The majority of the book focuses on the partnership of two heroin dealers, Kurt and Danny, and examines their daily lifestyles and the transitional periods they faced during their operations. On a much broader level, Hoffer wanted to characterize the heroin dealing occurring on the consumer-oriented side of the heroin dealing business, as well as understand the evolution of Kurt and Danny’s operations. Hoffer’s virtually unlimited
Criminological Analysis Robert Merton’s strain theory is based on that crime is a result of a strain between economic classes. His theory assumes that people are motivated to gaining the American dream of a comfortable lifestyle but some people find it hard to go through traditional means to achieving that lifestyle. Society sets these high standards through the media and marketing that are unrealistic to the average American. Merton has 5 key different characteristic categories that society adapts in setting the goal and achieving the goal. The first is conformity.
Doris at age of 19 was a drug dealer and got arrested for selling $200 worth of heroin to an undercover police officer in 1974 in Michigan. She was sentenced to 10-20-year prison term for that crime, but she escaped 8 months later. After the scape, she lives her life as a model citizen. However, 34 years later she was re-arrested by her fingerprints. Then she was extradited back to Michigan to fulfill her sentence. Now her family and friends want that the Michigan governor grants her clemency.
Crack users range from the Wall Street stockbroker to a homeless person living in Central Park, but by and large this evil drug called crack had its biggest impact on New York’s inner city minority population. A New York doctor, Dr. Mark Gold who is the person who set up and helps run the not for profit organization called 800-COCAINE, a hotline set up to help addicts and perspective users answer questions about the drug and also offers counseling and drug intervention services; suggested that his findings showed that, “occasional users of crack quickly increased, the amount and frequency of crack use until total dependency was achieved.” Men and women who were once law abiding citizens and honest people were now robbing and stealing to pay for the drug, and many who once enjoyed good health were now suffering from a variety of physical and mental aliments springing from their cocaine abuse. Crack brings along with its amazing high, some ominous dangers. Dr. Robert Maslansky is the director of New York City’s Bellevue Hospital
1. Chapter three, Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?, expresses an intriguing thought by authors, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. The Freakonomics authors follow a courageous man, Sudhir Venkatesh, a student at the University of Chicago, in his effort to understand and research the mysterious drug dealing business. Venkatesh first approached dangerous gangs and dealers in Chicago with a simple survey to learn more about them. After stumbling upon a branch of the “Black Gangster Disciple Nation”, Venkatesh wanted to take his study further. J.T., this specific branches leader, was interested in Venkatesh’s survey and initiated him as a spectator to his group. Venkatesh was integrated with this group for six years an acquired an immense amount of information on drug and gang groups. Thankfully, J.T. kept documents on the group 's wages. By looking at these books, Venkatesh was able to identify the hierarchy of a typical drug cartel. Which is where the main question of chapter is answered. Only the people on the top of the system made good money, for example, J.T. Contrary to popular belief, lower jobs of this business like foot soldiers make only $3.30 an hour, below minimum wage. Despite the fact that the foot soldiers are the ones who physically put their life on the lines. This style is compared to major corporations such as McDonald 's for a more context comparison. However, the people that are
Contributing to these drug issues throughout America are multiple street gangs, drug cartels and drug lords. These groups to transport illegal drugs into America, to sell them illegally on the streets, for a very hefty profit. High crime profiled states and cities such as, New York, Baltimore, Maryland, District of Columbia, and Chicago host some of America’s most notorious gangs, cartels, and drug lords. The purpose of this research paper is to analyze the life of a notorious Baltimore drug lord, by the name of Anthony Ayeni Jones, and how a life of drugs effected his personal life, caused criminal actions, and resulted in court trials and a life sentence in prison.
The book being reviewed in this papers is Code of the Suburb: Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers by Scott Jacques and Richard Wright. This book is written on the context of 30 different individuals from a small location referenced as “Peachville” in Atlanta Georgia (Jacques & Wright 1). Each of these known individuals during their time in high school were selling drugs. Marijuana was the particular substance to be sold, but few dove into other illicit drugs including ecstasy, cocaine etc. (3). Generally speaking, the first questions that appears is what pushed these students to dive into the prospects of peddling and using drugs? Better yet, why continue to use them? The 7 chapters included in this book contain various stories of popularity and financial gains and losses along with the destruction of relationships.
Griselda Blanco was born on February 15, 1943 in Cartagena, Colombia. As a little girl her mother Ana Lucia Restrepo raised her in a city called Medellin in which is located in Colombia. At age 11 Griselda, allegedly kidnapped, tried to ransom, and eventually shot a child from an upscale flatland neighborhood near her own slum neighborhood. At age 14 she was reported to have run away from home and she stated that her mother was physically abusive. Since she run away from home at an early age she resorted to prostitution. Around the age of 20 she meet Carlos Trujillo and had three sons Dixon, Uber, and Osvaldo. Later on she remarried and had a fourth son with Alberto Bravo who then decided to move to the United States. Around the 1970s and
When considering the socio economic status of all parties involved in the handling and distribution of drugs it becomes clear which group can be more easily targeted for crimes. According to Officer Moldes of the Austin, Texas Police Department, we can break down the distribution chain of cocaine into three main groups, the traffickers, distributors, and dealers. Traffickers are the wealthiest within the chain and purchase the product in pure form, powder cocaine. This group is the least suspicious, usually college educated and from a wealthy upbringing; typically Caucasian, and
The correlation between gangs and drugs has always been an issue for the United States government. Major cities often overlooked the problem of youth gang violence, thinking it was only a 1960’s trend. Sixty years later, gangs and drugs continue to be a problem, but in an increasing number within urban, suburban and rural areas in the United States. People may characterize this problem with words such as violence, increase drug activity, and delinquencies, but not many seem to see the bigger picture. Lack of interaction, collaboration, and strategies from law enforcement, youth centers, businesses, churches, and political icons are increasing gang violence and drug related offenses in major cities. In such cities as Chicago, minority groups are the most vulnerable to joining a gang, which then leads to an involvement with drugs; they are faced with barriers – lack of family support, poverty, segregation, unemployment, etc. An incident that happened in Chicago history is the closing of the Cabrini-Green Project, where people involved with gangs had to find a new home, scattering gang-members throughout the city, and eventually leading to their spread and growth.
The Opium Dealer was the first to speak. All knew he was a man of great physique Since he fought in the war of Mozambique As well as ‘gainst the Sheikhs and Sikhs. He learned the savages and how they thought: He had the Maxim gun, and they had not.
Sub details-In some cases those who are smugglers all begin by taking drugs and the reason they might have taken it is because they in some type of way felt pressured by their so called “friends”.
One of the main economic problems that many people, particularly gangs, in Robert Taylor faced was the fact that they didn’t want to trade in their status for entry-level jobs because in many cases, gang leaders made far more than they would have if they worked minimum wage jobs (72). Many of the gang leaders such as J.T. held the false belief that the drug economy was “useful for the community, since it redistributed the drug addict’s money back into the community via the gang’s philanthropy” (115). However, the drug economy is not a stable or lucrative economy compared to your average jobs because it was clearly very hard for people to get ahead in gangs, thus no one ever had a fair shot of earning more money in their life span. Nevertheless, the situation can tend to be a grey area of debate since a lot of the residents did attempt to hold blue-collar jobs but continued to get laid off (60). In this case, the underground economy of drug sales may have been the only choice for residents looking for an income. Another way the gangs play into the economic situation is when there are drive by shootings, in which case parents
“According to statistics from the National Youth Gang Center, more than 24,500 gangs, consisting of more than 770,000 members, exist in about 3,300 cities in the U.S.” (Rank 1). Although it is not illegal to be a member of a gang, it should be noted many gangs participate in illegal activity for funding and will use the money as a way to entice new membership. The “money begins flowing, and with that comes all of the things associated with material wealth that is usually beyond the reach of these adolescents without the criminal activity of being involved in a gang” (Nawojczyk 3).