Toward the Development of a Typology of Illegal Drug Markets

Ethnographic research is particularly well suited to investigate emergent phenomena and to access and describe populations and social environments which are obscured from normal observation. Ongoing ethnographic research on Manhattan's Lower East Side combines direct observation and qualitative interviews to describe the wide variety of local retail drug markets, the social contexts in which they evolve, and how the interactions between the various markets affect drug availability, styles of distribution, patterns of use, and types of crime and violence associated with particular types of markets. By drawing a multifaceted sample, the study offers a moving picture of how trends in drug use and distribution emerge, mature, encounter difficulties, and metamorphose. The research compares and contrasts distributors who participate in markets that are differentiated according to the social and technical organization of distribution. It also documents the differential and changing sociodemographic composition of consumer groups associated with the variety of illegal drug markets and describes transformations over time in the behaviors, beliefs and norms of each category of users with regard to drug distribution and use. Crime Prevention Studies, volume 11, pp. 121-152 122 — Ric Curtis and Travis Wendel