NCJ Number
228946
Journal
Journal of Crime and Justice Volume: 32 Issue: 2 Dated: 2009 Pages: 21-48
Date Published
2009
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This article examines the direct and indirect impact of the war on drugs on deportees with criminal records from New York and Santo Domingo.
Abstract
This article draws attention to a growing population that is both directly and indirectly connected to the war on drugs in the United States; a population that has rarely been considered criminologically in their relationship to the drug war: deportees with criminal records all of whom were permanent residents of the United States. The explosion in the rate of deportation occurred primarily after 1996 when the immigration laws were radically revised, broadening the terms under which a non-citizen could be deported, applying retroactively to his or her crime. It is argued that deportees, who entered in the era of the drug war and a society for which most are ill-prepared with little social support, few job prospects, and a level of socio-cultural estrangement which can easily lead to depression and the abuse of drugs, are the results of a socially bulimic process. This article, based on the life histories of 60 interviewees deported from East Coast cities to the Dominican Republic from 1996-2004, almost all of whom having served long terms of imprisonment in Federal or State prison on drug-related charges, describes and analyzes the ways in which the war on drugs has directly and indirectly influenced their lives and limited their life chances, both in the United States and in the receiving country. The article focuses on five periods of their life course: settlement in the United States, pathways to the criminal justice system, the United States prison experience, deportation, and resettlement in the Dominican Republic. Notes and references