Crime
Deviant behavior is more likely to occur in a situation in which individuals lack access to legitimate means to achieve their economic goals.
Systemic crime arises out of the system of drug distribution. It includes disputes over territory between rival drug dealers, assaults and homicides committed within dealing hierarchies as a means of enforcing normative codes, robberies of drug dealers and the usually violent retaliation by the dealers or their bosses, elimination of informers, disputes over drugs and/or drug paraphernalia, punishment for selling adulterated or phony drugs, punishment for failing to pay one's debts, and robbery violence related to the social ecology of copping areas. Systemic violence has been referred to as a means to achieve "economic regulation and control" in an illicit market. As one expert at the Sentencing Commission hearing on crack cocaine explained regarding this type of crime, "[i]n an underground economy, you can't sue. So you use violence to enforce your breaches of contract or perceived breaches of contract."
The rapid development of new drug-selling groups, following the introduction of crack brought with it competition. Accordingly, violence within new selling groups internally to maintain control and violence and externally to maintain selling territory was more likely to characterize the unstable crack markets than more established drug markets and distribution systems.
Systemic violence fluctuates with phases of the illicit market economy. Rates of homicidal violence were high when a new market was being forged for powder cocaine. Wars between Colombian and Cuban syndicates for control of middle-level cocaine distribution contributed substantially to rising homicide rates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When these wars were over, even though there was plenty of cocaine on the streets in the mid-1980s, homicide rates declined. The peak level of homicidal violence caused by the crack wars is similar to the peak caused by the powder cocaine wars which is, in turn, similar to the peak caused by the alcohol wars during prohibition.
Economically compulsive crime is committed by persons who are financially driven to the criminal activity by financial needs brought about by drug consumption – for example, robbery that is committed by drug users in order to support costly drug use. Studies indicate that prostitution is an economically compulsive crime for women who use both crack and powder cocaine.
Crack cocaine represented an innovation that allowed users to conveniently smoke cocaine vapors on a low cost-per-dose basis, starting in the mid-1980s. Crack markets emerged in the inner city to serve users 24/7. Wealthier customers would come to these markets bringing much needed cash into impoverished communities and providing illegal jobs for many inner-city residents as dealers and in other drug distribution roles. These growing crack markets were associated with increased levels of violence in the inner city. Unfortunately, most low-level dealers and operatives ended up consuming their profits through their own growing drug habits without having saved any of their money.
Since 1989, the crack era in New York City has been drawing to a close. All across the U.S., the prevalence of crack use has been declining, especially among youths. In a related shift, inner-city violence has also decreased dramatically.
Many parents and responsible adults do not have the human and social capital necessary to pull together a healthy and productive lifestyle for themselves and their dependent children, let alone other unfortunate children stranded by the collapse of inner-city households.
This “notorious 100-to-one” sentencing disparity was enacted in 1986. Although they were chemically almost identical, crack and powder cocaine were regarded very differently by the law. The drug identified with black users (crack) was treated as though it were 100 times as villainous as the same amount of cocaine, a drug popular with affluent professionals.
There is widespread belief that cocaine in general and crack cocaine in particular "causes crime to go up at a tremendously increased rate." During debate about the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, for example, members of Congress expressed deep concern about increased crime related to crack cocaine.
The media and public fears of a direct causal relationship between crack and other crimes do not seem to be confirmed by empirical data. Rather, the levels of violence and crime associated with crack appear to reflect parallel and other interactive forces that are related to the relative immaturity and volatility of the crack markets, the ages and types of persons initially attracted to crack distribution, the increasing social and economic disorganization of the nation's inner cities beginning in the 1980's, and the mounting proliferation of more powerful guns, as well as a spread of cheaper powder cocaine during the same period of time.
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