NCJ Number
148762
Journal
Deviant Behavior Volume: 14 Issue: 3 Dated: (July-September 1993) Pages: 187-208
Date Published
1993
Length
22 pages
Annotation
Information from ethnographic interviews with 30 undercover police officers working in high schools in a large city in the United States was used to examine the communication patterns involved when their identities are questioned and they respond in ways to prevent the exposure of their full identity, a process called getting narced.
Abstract
The research used information from police officers who worked in school in the school years 1989-90, 1990-91, and 1991-92. Results revealed that the causes of the status degredation ceremony called getting narced are tactical in nature and involve two types of transactional overaggressiveness: (1) attempting to purchase drugs too early in infiltrations and (2) purchasing drugs in too great a quantity from too many people over too short a period of time. The undercover police officers' neutralization responses are dramaturgical in nature and involve sarcastic admission, evidential refutation, and belligerent denials or threatening retorts. Footnotes and 63 references (Author abstract modified)