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Chapter 1
Introduction
This research is, in large part, motivated by my awareness of the multifarious harms associated with the trade in illegal drugs, and my desire to understand the causal factors that contribute towards violence amongst actors. A very rich tradition of crime ethnography is evident in our nearest neighbour, the United Kingdom (see, for example, Ellis, 2016, Hobbs, 1995a, 1988, Winlow, 2001), and I became determined to use whatever skill and knowledge I possess to uncover salient factors that contribute to the violence that was occurring on my doorstep. It is blatantly obvious, even to the casual observer, that the vast majority of drug-associated violence occurs in working-class communities and involves primarily working-class people as victims and perpetrators. For those who are interested, there are sophisticated and detailed works available that embed serious crime in a wider social structural context (see especially Hall, 2012, Hall et al., 2008, Hobbs, 2013, 1995a). It is equally obvious that problematic drug use of the type discussed in this work is closely associated with poverty and social disadvantage, and develops amidst a whole range of structural and economic factors (Bourgois, 2003, 2009, OâMahony, 1996, 2008, Saris, 2008, 2010). While acknowledging social structure as a key ingredient for understanding addiction, as well as related violence and serious crime, and also acknowledging that a multi-million euro trade in drugs involves many actors from across the social spectrum, this current work seeks to provide a specific focus on how interactions between actors contribute to violence. My aim is to uncover the perceived functions and causes of violence in an illegal drug market, and to explain why so many people are suffering. I am aware that my analysis may not endear itself to those who seek a structural explanation of harm.
The research target group are the dependent and addicted drug users who participate in the street retail scene to acquire their daily supply of drugs; street-level dealers who sell drugs to maintain their own supply; and higher-level dealers who are motivated by profit. These are people of âthe streetâ; the street being a euphemism for that collection of people who participate in this market, and for the regularities that âgovernâ this arena of economic and social action. The research is not concerned with irregular or recreational drug users; young people popping pills and snorting lines at music festivals, or middle-class university students with a penchant for being wasted. The text is also, for the most part, not focused on the young working-class men who sell illegal substances for recreational use in their housing estates, usually dealing small quantities to supplement their income or to raise some money for their own weekend drug use. That cohort deserves a study of their own and a reasonable sample could provide fascinating data for a researcher. It is also not concerned with more mature low-level sellers who supplement their income by shifting a few hundred eurosâ worth of weed every week and rarely run up unmanageable debts. The reader should therefore be assured that I do not assume that all users of illicit drugs are dysfunctional or problematic, and not all dealers are violent or domineering. Nevertheless, there is clearly a chronically addicted population of people who represent a consistent demand for substances, and a committed and skilled cohort of dealers who make significant profit from meeting this demand. This is, therefore, a study about the hazards of living as a drug-addicted participant at the lower echelons of the illegal drug trade; the addicted and chaotic daily users who live out their addictions on public streets. This is a study about the relationship between the consumer and the supplier, between the addict and the dealer, between the much-blighted community of dependent users and the profit-oriented dealers who benefit from their malady. This is also a study about the dominance of some men over sections of drug markets and their own communities, and conflicts that infrequently arise between such men. However, even within this subset of the many and varied actors who come under the umbrella of the âillegal drug tradeâ, this sample represents only a fraction. Therefore, while the data in this work is rich and the analysis hopefully illuminating, the reader should be cognisant of issues of sample size and generalisability.
The text does not focus, for the most part, on details and discussions of what drugs participants were using or selling. Dublin is a city with historically high rates of opiate use, with both intravenous and smoking methods of use being prevalent (OâMahony, 1996, 2008, Saris, 2008, Saris & OâReilly, 2010). Nevertheless, a considerable proportion of the cityâs dependent users are poly-drug consumers. Opiate users mix heroin with benzodiazepines and other pills of various types, methadone is a drug that is much abused, and alcohol is also important. Further, due to the increased availability of cocaine since 2000 (Saris & OâReilly, 2010), and later crack cocaine, the menu of substances regularly used by some addicted individuals expanded. In more recent years, New Psychoactive Substances1 and drugs such as methamphetamine further complicate the picture. In short, drug addicts use whatever drugs their particular tastes require and very often go through phases of preference. It therefore makes little sense to attempt to track in detail exactly what drugs participants were using or dealing at various stages of their lives. For the purposes of this study, the principle of credit and debt collection, as well as addictive craving and hedonistic overindulgence, are similar across substances. Where differences or specificities emerged in the data, such as the association of excessive cocaine binging with increased levels of paranoia or aggression, they are discussed within the text. The work also presents discussions of addiction as lived by some participants. The text interrogates how this complex disorder manifests in the daily life of individuals, that is, the symptomology of obsessive and compulsive thought and behaviour. While underlying mental and emotional illness is considered crucial to understanding and treating those who suffer with addictions (Saris, 2008), these comorbidities and issues of dual-diagnosis are not considered in this current work. Indeed, such matters as the aetiology and treatment of addiction are beyond the scope of this study.
The story is told from the perspective of current and former market participants combined with a strong analytic voice from the author. I seek to understand violence in a drug market by examining the experiences of those who have perpetrated violence and those who have been victimised by violence. The rich and descriptive data collected in formal interviews, and supported by insights gained during informal and ethnographic work with respondents, allows for a detailed examination of the interpersonal and intrapersonal factors that contribute to violence perpetration. I used what I judged to be the most valuable insights from criminology, the sociology of deviance, social psychology and addiction studies, in which to immerse the stories of participants and interpret their words. In some cases it is possible to identify meaning and motivation in accounts of violence perpetration, in others it simply is not. We should not assume a clear instrumentalism in much violence. Nevertheless, the utilisation of interdisciplinary works regarding violence allows us to at least provide a degree of coherence when analysing the words of research participants. It is, of course, left to the judgement of the reader regarding the wisdom, or lack thereof, of the analysis presented in this text. Ultimately, this work represents an effort to place some order onto a truly chaotic social and economic arena.
The study
The aim of this study is to investigate violence in Dublinâs illegal drug trade and provide insight into the varied factors that influence violent perpetration. The work intends to cross the moral boundary (Katz, 1997) that prevents âoutsidersâ from seeing the rational as well as irrational dynamics of violence in serious crime. While researching addiction is possible with a careful and respectful methodological ethos, it is, on the other hand, quite difficult to access the âlifeworldâ of the serious criminal, and to gain information that helps us to understand the reasoning and decisions that contribute to violent actions and outcomes (Hobbs, 2013). The drug trade is populated by drug users and the addicted (White, 1996), the egotistical and narcissistic (Bovenkerk, 2000), and the determined entrepreneur who is willing to do whatever it takes to make money (Hobbs, 2013). Many of these men are highly sensitive to insult and turn to violence for non-economic reasons (Winlow, 2001, 2012). Indeed, as Hans Toch (1992: 176) warns, âthe violent individual is a man of unusual and considerable complexityâ. The trade also operates under the pressures of illegality and immorality, and is an open secret shrouded in deceit.
Ethnography
Ethnography has long been one of the favoured methods for researching deviancy, and lends itself to a plethora of âstrategies [that] have often proved as varied and imaginative as the world they describeâ (Winlow et al., 2001: 536). Ethnography is a method that aims to understand other peopleâs lives by describing what people are doing and how they are doing it (Katz, 2002). Indeed, Spradley (1979: 3) states that ârather than studying people, ethnography means learning from peopleâ. Jack Katzâs (1997: 393) argument regarding the primary warrant for ethnography of deviance is especially relevant to this current research:
Perhaps the single most common warrant for sociological ethnography is that what is obvious to the subjects has been kept systematically beyond the cognitive reach of the ethnographersâ audience because of the moral character of the social life under investigation.
As Pearson (1993: vii) states, âethnography is a messy businessâ, and ethnographic researchers often âviolate the canons of positivist researchâ (Bourgois, 2003: 13) by becoming âintimately involved with the people we studyâ (Bourgois, 2003: 13). Ethnography is therefore an âessential tool in digging out the real nature of crimeâ (Hobbs, 1988: 14). An ethnographic approach allows the researcher to access intimate details of the lives of target informants, and illuminates the agency of those immersed in deviant subcultures (Treadwell et al., 2018). Violent men who engage in criminal activities are deeply suspicious of outsiders, and gaining valid and illuminating data is certainly not easy. Similarly, Hobbsâ (1988: 15) âstatus as an insiderâ afforded him âa great deal of trust by my informantsâ and thus uncovered valuable truths and insights about the lived reality of crime.
This current research, however, does not fit neatly into an ethnographic research tradition, and can be considered more of a âmixed methodsâ approach. Crewe and Maruna (2006) found that spending informal time observing and chatting with prisoners greatly enhanced their understanding of the self-narratives of their research respondents. The insight they gained allowed the interpretation of life history accounts offered by participants, and they correctly state that ethnographic observation is at least as valuable as the spoken accounts of respondents in understanding the personal myths that people live by. Similarly, my research approach consisted of loosely structured formal interviews with respondents in addition to a considerable amount of time spent in a more informal manner with participants.
The core method for this research is the ethnographic interview; that is, qualitative interviewing that permits the emergence of rich data due to the ongoing relationships with participants and the familiarity of the researcher with the culture of participants (Heyl, 2001). Indeed, Spradley (1979) argues that a degree of enculturation is essential in ethnographic research, that is, the researcher should spend time and effort getting to know and understand the culture of those he or she is seeking to learn from. Enculturation is one of the features that distinguished ethnographic interviewing from a standard qualitative approach. Further, a researcherâs biography may give privileged access to a difficult to research deviant group, particularly adult deviants who are not under the supervision of state control services. Ethnographers can take advantage of their personal or demographic characteristics, such as gender or ethnicity, or their past involvement in deviancy, lending a degree of credibility that can leverage access to respondents (Hobbs, 2001a). Due to my personal biography, that is, a working-class Dublin native, I judged that I was sufficiently familiar with cultures of working-class entrepreneurship to start this research with confidence.
Bourgois (2003: 15) states that âethnographers never want to make the people they study look uglyâ, and it certainly was not my intention to produce a study that could be accused of being âa pornography of violence that reinforces popular ⌠stereotypesâ (Bourgois, 2003: 15). Nevertheless, a minority of the accounts of violence in this work are indeed graphic, and communicate callous and ruthless practice by individuals in Dublinâs illegal drug trade. Such research risks being of value to those who seek to stigmatise and repress the subject of study (Katz, 1997). Indeed, Bourgois states that âcountering traditional moralistic biases and middle-class hostility toward the poor should not come at the cost of sanitizing the suffering and destruction that exists on inner-city streetsâ (Bourgois, 2003: 12). I therefore sought to place accounts of violence within the context of both the lived experience of drug addiction, and the social context of strained interpersonal relationships amongst maladjusted people who trade in large sums of product and money. With addiction in particular, I sought to ânot disguise the fact that where the problem bites hardest it is a truly sad and awful social difficultyâ (Pearson, 1987: 4).
Participants and access
In total, 35 people were interviewed for this research, 7 of whom agreed to be interviewed a second time. Therefore, the total number of formal interviews is 42; however, the research is also informed by many hours spent in informal conversation with participants. Of the 35 people in the study, 31 were directly involved in the drug trade at some point in their lives, either as addicts or dealers, many as both. The remaining four individuals did not personally participate in the drug trade but were people whom I judged to have a valuable insight into the topic at hand. Participants were chosen from across the city and care was taken to select people who had not been associates, friends, or indeed enemies, at any time in the past. Six participants interviewed for this research are female, however it should be noted that all of the individuals who operated at the higher levels of the trade, that is, those who used violence as a strategy for debt collection and those who became entwined in ongoing violent conflicts with others, are male. Age at time of interview ranged from 18 to 64, with the average age being mid-thirties. Interviews for this study were conducted between 2011 and 2014. Of the 31 interviewees who had been participants in the drug trade, a majority had been abstinent from drugs and crime for some years at the time of interview. As a basic ethical injunction, but also as a practical and common sense measure to protect myself and participants, significant details of informants and their accounts have been altered. Pseudonyms are used in all cases; basic details of violent interactions have been changed in some instances, as have locations and slang. I have kept no record of people I have interviewed and all recordings and transcripts have been destroyed by time of publication, as have the hard drives they were stored on.
The researcher who endeavours to collect data from individuals who engaged in illegal activities, whether in their past or at the time of research, faces many challenges, the most difficult of which is access (Antonopoulos, 2008 Arsovska, 2008, Hobbs, 1995b, von Lampe, 2008). However, accessing participants for this research, including some of the men who were extremely violent in their past and who might reasonably have been reluctant to discuss their involvement in violence with a researcher, was not difficult. Of the 35 people interviewed, a significant number were chosen from among personal contacts I had built up during my time as a criminological researcher, and represent a purposive sampling approach (Bryman, 2008). Steve Hall and colleagues (Hall et al., 2008) found that using their extensive personal contacts to identify and access individuals who were involved in criminal behaviour was a productive if unorthodox strategy. Further, acquaintance interviews have the potential to provide rich data due to already established rapport (Garton & Copland, 2010). Indeed, as Bourgois (2003: 12) correctly states, âmost drug users and dealers distrust representatives of mainstream society and will not reveal their intimate experiences of substance abuse or criminal enterprise to a stra...
