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Drug dealing and other incoming generating activities in the non-specialist gang: results from the YOGEC project
Judith Aldridge, Juanjo Medina & Robert Ralphs
In: European Society of Criminology; 09 Sep 2009-12 Sep 2009; University of Slovenia, Lujubljana, Slovenia. 2009.
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Abstract
Drug dealing is popularly seen as the dominant, almost defining gang activity. The YOGEC (YOuth Gangs in an English City) ethnographic research study involved participant observation between 2005-7 in several areas of `Research City' and over 100 formal interviews with `gang members', their associates and families, and key informants. Although drug dealing was important for many gang members in the city, gangs there were no longer specialist drug dealing operations as they had previously been. Three separate developments effected this transition: the change from open to closed drugs markets; successful police operations; and the reduction in availability of large sums of money from other illegal enterprises to fund multi-kilo drug purchases. Drug sales are now fundamentally individual activity, not controlled by the gang, although involving some cooperation and division of labour. Gang members earned from a combination of legal and illegal opportunities in what might be described as `cafeteria-style' earning; an exclusive focus on illicit income is misleading. Most non-drug income-generating criminal activity was rarely gang-coordinated, and involved gang members operating as individuals or in small groups (typically two or three). These findings are discussed in relation to the existing theory on drug dealing and other earning-related activity in gangs.