Political Economy of Drug Dealing Among Urban Gangs

• NCJ Number: 149210
• Author(s): J Fagan
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 38 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Rockefeller Foundation
• Corporate Author: Social Science Research Council
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This paper will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming "Drug and Community," edited by Robert C. Davis, Arthur J. Lurigio, and Dennis P. Rosenbaum, published by Charles Thomas, Inc.

Annotation

This study examines past and recent data on gangs and drugs to develop an understanding of the relationship between drug-gang involvement and the structural changes in communities, along with the effects of structural change on the neighborhood social processes that foster the emergence of youth gangs.

Abstract

The paper begins with a brief review of the historical importance of community in the formation of youth gangs. This includes a discussion of the political and economic factors that shape the social structure of communities, the neighborhood effects that result from these forces, and the mediating effects of neighborhood processes on the formation of gangs. The author then reviews the dimensions of community that have resulted from political and economic forces and that themselves have influenced the emergence of drug markets in the past decade and the involvement of gangs in them. The study concludes with a discussion of a unifying framework that links the social and economic forces that affect communities with the emergence of youth gangs and their involvement in drug trafficking. 9 notes and 112 references