Drugs-Crime Connection Among Stable Addicts (From In Their Own Words: Criminals on Crime: An Anthology, P 180-188, 1996, Paul Cromwell, ed. - See NCJ-171367)

• NCJ Number: 171373
• Author(s): C E Faupel
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 9 pages
• Sale Source: Roxbury Publishing Co.
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: DCC; Excerpted from Shooting Dope: Career Patterns of Hard-core Heroin Users by Charles E. Faupel, University of Florida Press, 1991, P 73-86

Annotation

Interviews that focused on the life histories of 30 heroin addicts in the Wilmington, Del. area formed the basis of an analysis of the lifestyles and career patterns of hardcore heroin addicts; the relationship between drugs and crime; and whether addict criminals are skilled, rational, professional criminals or opportunists.

Abstract

Each participant was interviewed in sessions lasting from 2 to 4 hours, for a total of 10 to 25 hours over the course of the study. Eighteen participants were male and 12 were female. Twenty-four were under institutional or community correctional supervision. The participants included 22 blacks and 8 whites. Results revealed that these stable addicts were skilled and successful criminal entrepreneurs. Most narrowed the range of their criminal activities considerably in the process of becoming stable addicts, although they were not professionals or specialists in the senses described by previous researchers. The main hustle of each addict required three broad types of skills: technical skills, social skills, and intuitive skills. Their main hustles represented more or less full-time criminal roles and produced a life structure that prevented the heroin habit from becoming uncontrollable. The main hustle was both a primary means of income and a source of identity and prestige in the subculture.