This volume fills a research gap of striking proportions by exploring the contingencies that mediate the crimes perpetrated on those who are themselves perpetrators. The notion that violence is something that happens only to law-abiding citizens is both widely held and inaccurate. The disproportionate share of victims of crime are, in reality, themselves involved in crime. Yet existing scholarship has failed to explore the contingencies that mediate offenses like drug robbery - from the forces that inspire it, to the methods used to select targets, to the means employed to generate compliance, down to the tactics used to thwart retaliatory attempts after the crime has ended.Given that predatory behavior between and among offenders ultimately spreads to society at large (the ""contagion effect""), a research gap of striking proportions has emerged. The imprudence of robbing other criminals is widely assumed. Yet criminologists paradoxically observe that a major benefit of robbing fellow criminals is that they cannot report the offense to the authorities. Why, then, should offenders elect to reduce their odds of getting arrested at the cost of enhancing their chances of getting killed?Drawing on candid interviews with the perpetrators, Jacobs attempts to answer such questions and fill this gap in the research agenda of criminology. The result is a narrative that explores the world of street-corner drugs from the vantage point of those who actually commit these high-risk crimes. It also introduces serious ethical issues that criminology and law enforcement tend to gloss over or ignore entirely. This work is innovative and troubling at the same time. It takes a theme that Hollywood films have explored in greater depth than social science, and restores it as a crucial part of the ethnography of crime.

Robbery can be planned or spontaneous and is a typically short, chaotic crime that is comparatively under-researched. This book transports the reader to the streets and focuses on the real-life narratives and motivations of the youth gang members and adult organized criminals immersed in this form of violence. Uniquely focusing on robberies involving drug dealers and users, this book considers the material and emotional gains and losses to offenders and victims, and offers policy recommendations to reduce occurrences of this common crime.

This volume fills a research gap of striking proportions by exploring the contingencies that mediate the crimes perpetrated on those who are themselves perpetrators. The notion that violence is something that happens only to law-abiding citizens is both widely held and inaccurate. The disproportionate share of victims of crime are, in reality, themselves involved in crime. Yet existing scholarship has failed to explore the contingencies that mediate offenses like drug robbery - from the forces that inspire it, to the methods used to select targets, to the means employed to generate compliance, down to the tactics used to thwart retaliatory attempts after the crime has ended.Given that predatory behavior between and among offenders ultimately spreads to society at large (the ""contagion effect""), a research gap of striking proportions has emerged. The imprudence of robbing other criminals is widely assumed. Yet criminologists paradoxically observe that a major benefit of robbing fellow criminals is that they cannot report the offense to the authorities. Why, then, should offenders elect to reduce their odds of getting arrested at the cost of enhancing their chances of getting killed?Drawing on candid interviews with the perpetrators, Jacobs attempts to answer such questions and fill this gap in the research agenda of criminology. The result is a narrative that explores the world of street-corner drugs from the vantage point of those who actually commit these high-risk crimes. It also introduces serious ethical issues that criminology and law enforcement tend to gloss over or ignore entirely. This work is innovative and troubling at the same time. It takes a theme that Hollywood films have explored in greater depth than social science, and restores it as a crucial part of the ethnography of crime.

Randol Contreras came of age in the South Bronx during the 1980s, a time when the community was devastated by cuts in social services, a rise in arson and abandonment, and the rise of crack-cocaine. For this riveting book, he returns to the South Bronx with a sociological eye and provides an unprecedented insiderÕs look at the workings of a group of Dominican drug robbers. Known on the streets as ÒStickup Kids,Ó these men raided and brutally tortured drug dealers storing large amounts of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and cash. As a participant observer, Randol Contreras offers both a personal and theoretical account for the rise of the Stickup Kids and their violence. He mainly focuses on the lives of neighborhood friends, who went from being crack dealers to drug robbers once their lucrative crack market opportunities disappeared. The result is a stunning, vivid, on-the-ground ethnographic description of a drug robberyÕs violence, the drug market high life, the criminal life course, and the eventual pain and suffering experienced by the casualties of the Crack Era. Provocative and eye-opening, The Stickup Kids urges us to explore the ravages of the drug trade through weaving history, biography, social structure, and drug market forces. It offers a revelatory explanation for drug market violence by masterfully uncovering the hidden social forces that produce violent and self-destructive individuals. Part memoir, part penetrating analysis, this book is engaging, personal, deeply informed, and entirely absorbing.

Brian Cockerill has ruled his world with an iron fist. Using nothing but his hands as weapons, he has patrolled the streets, clubs and raves of Britain in order to keep order and to 'tax' those whose ill-gotten gains he sees fit to take a share of. Yet despite his appalling record of aggression, Brian is a man who lives by rules and respect.

Robbery can be planned or spontaneous and is a typically short, chaotic crime that is comparatively under-researched. This book transports the reader to the streets and focuses on the real-life narratives and motivations of the youth gang members and adult organized criminals immersed in this form of violence. Uniquely focusing on robberies involving drug dealers and users, this book considers the material and emotional gains and losses to offenders and victims, and offers policy recommendations to reduce occurrences of this common crime.

A "former cop sets the record straight in this ... memoir about his youth selling crack in the '80s with one of NYC's toughest gangs and later rise through the ranks of the NYPD to become a community leader"--

Drug dealers beware. The Devil is coming to get you. Gangster Stephen French invented the perfect crime: robbing drug barons of their huge fortunes. In SAS-style swoops, French raided their fortified mansions and tortured them with horrifying violence until they paid up. Through 'taxing' the richest and most powerful crimelords in the UK, he netted over £20 million. French was no ordinary criminal. He was a world-champion fighter, he studied psychology at university to master mind-control techniques, and he used the teachings of Machiavelli and samurai warriors to outwit his enemies. The Devil also reveals French's complex relationship with Curtis Warren, the wealthiest criminal in British history. The two were childhood pals, then partners and finally bitter enemies. Now a legitimate businessman, French built up a multimillion-pound empire. Having eventually turned his back on his former life, he is now seeking to set the record straight.

"The criminal class is a more exact cross-section of humanity than any trade could be." –Luc Sante, interview by The Believer Weed, coke, heroin, molly, promethazine, crack, PCP, LCD, opium, hashish, mushrooms, and countless other illicit substances flood the streets of New York City where they are consumed as quickly as they can be delivered. The War on Drugs may have been declared in 1971, but the numbers are in and the government’s $1.5 trillion war has done little to nothing to kink the flow of drugs in America. In New York City the NYPD has even instated a Stop and Frisk policy that, since its 2002 inception, has resulted in millions of New Yorkers being unconstitutionally stopped and searched. This controversial policy has heightened the danger for the city’s intrepid drug dealers, who brave all weather and police-profiling to meet their customers' insatiable desires. Add on the constant threat of violence and robbery, and it is arguably the most high-risk yet lucrative time to be a NYC dealer. Demand never ceases to grow, and where there is demand, there will always be plenty of outlaw capitalists willing to step up and supply. For Dealers, street reporter Peter Madsen set out across New York City—from staid Gramercy residences to bleak homeless hangouts; grimy Bushwick bike messenger bars and tony Park Avenue penthouses—to interview this particular criminal class. Through anonymous one-on-one interviews with an alarmingly wide host of subjects (including a transient heroin-addict supporting his habit, cute art-school girls running a weed lounge, a connection-ready concierge, fixed-gear weed couriers, stick-up kids, and a couple lawyers who deal on the side), Madsen extracts un-glamorized, sometimes hilarious, and always nuanced accounts of the navigators of New York City's expansive drug underworld.

This starkly revealing book explores the crack cocaine trade from the candid perspectives of sellers themselves.