Women in the drug economy in the United States

Last updated

In the United States, women represent roughly a quarter of all arrests. [1] Women and men are both more likely to be arrested for less serious property crimes, but men are more likely than women to be involved in violent crime. [2] Since 1960, while arrests in total have decreased, women have become a higher percentage of those arrests, partly due to an increase in drug-related arrests. Steffensmeier and Schwartz (2008) claim that this increase is not because more women are committing substance-abuse offenses, but because law enforcement officials have begun using broader, more expansive definitions of crimes, arresting more people for minor crimes. [2] Because women are more likely to commit these minor crimes, females have been disproportionately added to the number of arrests.

Contents

Women and the War on Drugs

In the late 1960s, recreational drug use among the middle-class increased as it became more socially mainstream. It was associated with countercultural movements and social and political unrest. [3] In 1970, the Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which regulated and penalized drug use according to five different “schedules”. Each recreational drug was assigned a schedule based on its potential for addiction and abuse, its acceptable medical uses, and its safety profile. Each schedule carried different levels of penalties for use, possession, or distribution of a drug – Schedule I had the harshest penalties, while Schedule V had the most lenient ones. [4]

The War on Drugs and public anti-drug sentiment reached a peak when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981 and First Lady Nancy Reagan started her “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign targeted at middle-class children and adolescents. Simultaneously, the advent of crack cocaine in New York City severely impacted inner-city areas and increased the public's political opposition to drug use. [3] Reagan also signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986, which imposed mandatory minimum sentences, removing discretion from judges when sentencing drug offenders. [5]

Dana Britton in 2011 [6] and Steffensmeier and Schwartz in 2008 [2] conclude the War on Drugs has created a disproportionately large impact on women, especially on women of color, because of an increase in the severity and frequency of minor crime- and drug-related arrests and the fact that women are more likely than men are to commit non-serious crimes.

Bloom, Owen and Covington (2004) [7] additionally state that the majority of women offenders are poor, undereducated, and underemployed, hurting their chances of desisting properly and increasing their risk of recidivism after leaving prison. Around 60% of women in state and federal prisons are mothers of minor children; the effect of the War on Drugs has been not only to disproportionately impact the women themselves, but also to impact their children, the next generation. In addition, as Britton [6] and Beckett, Nyrop, and Pfingst [8] point out, Hispanic and African-American women are overrepresented in the population of women involved in the criminal justice system.

The advent of crack cocaine, a cheaper version of cocaine that could be smoked, in American inner-city neighborhoods in the 1980s coincided with rampant deindustrialization, increasing unemployment rates, and an increasing number of female heads-of-households. The advent of crack also came at the same time as the peak of the War on Drugs and its increasingly more punitive laws and focus on defunding welfare programs. [9] Because of this, as well as the cheaper price of crack, women's drug use rates went up. Ryder and Brisgone interview a group of mothers who grew up during this “Crack Era” in the 1990s to find out how they and their children were affected by the War on Drugs and crack.

They find that the mothers’ heavy use of drugs during this era heavily influenced their children to try drugs. Additionally, many women were pressured or chose to perform sex work in order to support their “urgent need for drugs”. The authors of this study found that the mothers’ addiction further forced them to spend less time with their families, disrupting ties between mother and child, although they did love their children and wanted to spend time with them when they could. [9]

Women's participation in the drug economy

Women and the informal economy

The informal economy is a sector of the economy that includes “all criminal activity that is income generating”. [10] In the United States, this means that the selling and consumption of drugs is part of the informal economy. Throughout the world, working women are more likely to work in the informal sector, partly because their traditional household and childcare responsibilities may make it preferable to work from home. Others believe that women are “forced” into the informal sector because the formal sector fails to accommodate gender-specific needs for women, such as paid maternity leave. [10]

Since the 1980s, cheaper imports have been competing for domestically manufactured goods in the United States, leading to deindustrialization, particularly in urban areas. This has caused unemployment in the formal sector. Furthermore, a decrease in welfare policies has also encouraged unemployment. Both of these factors have led to a growth in the informal sector of the U.S. economy, raising the number of women who work in this sector. [11] This has caused an influx of women into drug markets.

The drug economy as an equalizer

The presence of women in drug markets has prompted sociologists, criminologists, and anthropologists to discuss the role of women in these markets. Do they hold positions in the drug economy that are liberated from mainstream society's gender inequality, or does society's sexism reproduce itself in the drug economy?

Anthropologist Phillippe Bourgois, in an ethnography of the crack market in Spanish Harlem, states that the presence of women on the streets and in the crack market illustrates their emancipation from household labor and childcare. They are free to participate in street life. [12] According to Natasha Du Rose, Wilson (1993) makes the argument that women's crime and drug use are rising to match men's because of women's emancipation. [13] Du Rose quotes Fagan as saying that women's positions in the drug economy are high-status enough that prostitution plays a “relatively insignificant” part in generating income for these women. [13]

The drug economy perpetuating inequalities

While Bourgois in 1989 states that women are free to take part in the drug trade now that they have been liberated from being wives and mothers, he qualifies this by saying that “traditional gender relations still govern income-generating strategies in the underground economy”. [12] His ethnographic research shows that the majority of women in the Spanish Harlem crack market become sex workers to support their addictions. While women participate more in the drug economy, they still are forced into traditional street roles when they need to generate income. [12]

Sociologists Lisa Maher and Kathleen Daly in 1996 performed an ethnographic study of women in the Bushwick drug market in Brooklyn. They used a combination of participant observation fieldwork and interviews with the women and found that, in a highly hierarchical drug market, women occupy the lowest rungs of the market. “Owners”, who all happen to be men, employ “managers” who control a number of regular and casual “sellers”. These sellers in turn employ “runners”, “steerers”, and “coppers”, who supply the sellers, advertise their brand of drugs, or buy drugs for other customers. The runners, steerers, coppers, and casual sellers occupy the lowest-power and lowest-income positions of this market, and have the most women participants. The upper levels of the hierarchy have only men participants. In this study, Maher and Daly refute the idea that the emergence of the crack economy has afforded emancipation and opportunity for women; gender inequality has continued to be a presence even in the informal economy. The only change Maher and Daly found brought by women's liberation appears to be a decrease in the number of women relying on male boyfriends or husbands to sell drugs. [14]

Lisa Maher continues her research on the Bushwick drug economy in her 1997 book Sexed Work. She reiterates her findings with Daly on the low-income, low-power participation of women in the drug market, but she also focuses on the sex work women more commonly perform to generate income. Since the influx of cheap crack into the market, Maher finds out that more women have been induced to participate in street-level prostitution, driving up competition and driving down prices, further disadvantaging the women, especially low-income women of color who typically do not attract high-paying clients anyway. Furthermore, while the influx of crack lowered prices significantly, Maher's book does not support the idea that women frequently exchange sex directly for drugs. [15]

Women's strategies for coping with inequalities

Although women can be disadvantaged in the drug economy, they find ways to cope with these inequalities. In Sexed Work, Lisa Maher states that some women adopt a “badass” or a “crazy” persona in order to survive amongst violent male counterparts. [15] Maher and Susan L. Hudson, in a literature review of the women in the drug economy, explain that women are able to use their image as “feminine”, “vulnerable”, or "innocent" to hide from police suspicions and sell drugs successfully. They also may be able to use their “feminine” social and communication skills to defuse potentially violent situations. Maher and Hudson also find that many women can cope with limited opportunities for generating income in the drug economy by “diversifying”: they make money through a flexible mix of sex work, welfare, formal sector jobs, and drug selling. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Informal economy</span> Economic activity unregulated by government

An informal economy is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government. Although the informal sector makes up a significant portion of the economies in developing countries, it is sometimes stigmatized as troublesome and unmanageable. However, the informal sector provides critical economic opportunities for the poor and has been expanding rapidly since the 1960s. Integrating the informal economy into the formal sector is an important policy challenge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Illegal drug trade</span> Global black market

The illegal drug trade or drug trafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. The think tank Global Financial Integrity's Transnational Crime and the Developing World report estimates the size of the global illicit drug market between US$426 and US$652 billion in 2014 alone. With a world GDP of US$78 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally and it remains very difficult for local authorities to thwart its popularity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Downtown Eastside</span> Neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

The Downtown Eastside (DTES) is a neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. One of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, the DTES is the site of a complex set of social issues including disproportionately high levels of drug use, homelessness, poverty, crime, mental illness and sex work. It is also known for its strong community resilience, history of social activism, and artistic contributions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Workforce</span> Labour pool in employment

The workforce or labour force is a concept referring to the pool of human beings either in employment or in unemployment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic region like a city, state, or country. Within a company, its value can be labelled as its "Workforce in Place". The workforce of a country includes both the employed and the unemployed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War on drugs</span> Campaign of drug prohibition led by the United States federal government

The war on drugs is a global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States. The initiative includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of psychoactive drugs that the participating governments and the United Nations have made illegal. The term was popularized by the media shortly after a press conference given on June 18, 1971, by President Richard Nixon—the day after publication of a special message from President Nixon to the Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control—during which he declared drug abuse "public enemy number one". That message to the Congress included text about devoting more federal resources to the "prevention of new addicts, and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted" but that part did not receive the same public attention as the term "war on drugs". Two years prior to this, Nixon had formally declared a "war on drugs" that would be directed toward eradication, interdiction, and incarceration. In 2015, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the War on Drugs, estimated that the United States spends $51 billion annually on these initiatives, and in 2021, after 50 years of the drug war, others have estimated that the US has spent a cumulative $1 trillion on it.

Drugs and prostitution have been documented to have a direct correlation.

Sex differences in crime are differences between men and women as the perpetrators or victims of crime. Such studies may belong to fields such as criminology, sociobiology, or feminist studies. Despite the difficulty of interpreting them, crime statistics may provide a way to investigate such a relationship from a gender differences perspective. An observable difference in crime rates between men and women might be due to social and cultural factors, crimes going unreported, or to biological factors for example, testosterone or sociobiological theories). The nature of the crime itself may also require consideration as a factor.

Social issues in China are wide-ranging, and are a combined result of Chinese economic reforms set in place in the late 1970s, the nation's political and cultural history, and an immense population. Due to the significant number of social problems that have existed throughout the country, China's government has faced difficulty in trying to remedy the issues. Many of these issues are exposed by the Chinese media, while subjects that may contain politically sensitive issues may be censored. Some academics hold that China's fragile social balance, combined with a bubble economy makes China a very unstable country, while others argue China's societal trends have created a balance to sustain itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist school of criminology</span> School of criminology

The feminist school of criminology is a school of criminology developed in the late 1960s and into the 1970s as a reaction to the general disregard and discrimination of women in the traditional study of crime. It is the view of the feminist school of criminology that a majority of criminological theories were developed through studies on male subjects and focused on male criminality, and that criminologists often would "add women and stir" rather than develop separate theories on female criminality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crack epidemic in the United States</span> Drug epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s

The crack epidemic was a surge of crack cocaine use in major cities across the United States throughout the entirety of the 1980s and the early 1990s. This resulted in a number of social consequences, such as increasing crime and violence in American inner city neighborhoods, a resulting backlash in the form of tough on crime policies, and a massive spike in incarceration rates.

This article deals with activities of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency related to transnational crime, including the illicit drug trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black market</span> Market in which goods or services are traded illegally

A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal. Parties engaging in the production or distribution of prohibited goods and services are members of the illegal economy. Examples include the illegal drug trade, prostitution, illegal currency transactions, and human trafficking. Violations of the tax code involving income tax evasion constitute membership in the unreported economy.

The War on Drugs is a term for the actions taken and legislation enacted by the US federal government, intended to reduce or eliminate the production, distribution, and use of illicit drugs. The War on Drugs began during the Nixon administration with the goal of reducing the supply of and demand for illegal drugs, but an ulterior racial motivation has been proposed. The War on Drugs has led to controversial legislation and policies, including mandatory minimum penalties and stop-and-frisk searches, which have been suggested to be carried out disproportionately against minorities. The effects of the War on Drugs are contentious, with some suggesting that it has created racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, imprisonment, and rehabilitation. Others have criticized the methodology and the conclusions of such studies. In addition to disparities in enforcement, some claim that the collateral effects of the War on Drugs have established forms of structural violence, especially for minority communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biosocial criminology</span> Psychosocial examination of crime

Biosocial criminology is an interdisciplinary field that aims to explain crime and antisocial behavior by exploring biocultural factors. While contemporary criminology has been dominated by sociological theories, biosocial criminology also recognizes the potential contributions of fields such as behavioral genetics, neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fair Sentencing Act</span> A federal law in USA

The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 was an Act of Congress that was signed into federal law by United States President Barack Obama on August 3, 2010 that reduces the disparity between the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine needed to trigger certain federal criminal penalties from a 100:1 weight ratio to an 18:1 weight ratio and eliminated the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine, among other provisions. Similar bills were introduced in several U.S. Congresses before its passage in 2010, and courts had also acted to reduce the sentencing disparity prior to the bill's passage.

Mozambique is a source and, to a much lesser extent, a destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. The use of forced and bonded child laborers is common in rural areas of the country, often with the complicity of family members. Women and girls from these rural areas are also lured to cities with promises of employment or education, as well as to South Africa for involuntary domestic servitude and forced prostitution. NGO's report that Mozambican victims of sex traffickers were taken by traffickers to "training centers" in Eswatini and South Africa in preparation for an expected increase in demand for prostitution during the 2010 World Cup. Young Mozambican men and boys are subjected to conditions of forced labor in South African farms and mines; they often labor for months in South Africa without pay and under coercive conditions before being turned over to police for deportation as illegal migrants. Mozambican adults are subjected to forced labor and forced prostitution in Portugal. Women and girls from Rhodesia and Malawi who voluntarily migrate to Mozambique continue to be manipulated by traffickers into forced prostitution and domestic servitude subsequent to their arrival. There are an estimated 145,600 people living in slavery in Mozambique and countless more being taken unwillingly into South Africa.

People in prison are more likely than the general United States population to have received a mental disorder diagnosis, and women in prison have higher rates of mental illness and mental health treatment than do men in prison. Furthermore, women in prisons are three times more likely than the general population to report poor physical and mental health. Women are the fastest growing demographic of the United States prison population. As of 2019, there are about 222,500 women incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the United States. Women comprise roughly 8% of all inmates in the United States.

The feminist pathways perspective is a feminist perspective of criminology which suggests victimization throughout the life course is a key risk factor for women's entry into offending.

Lisa Maher is Professor and head of Viral Hepatitis Epidemiology, at the Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity, at the University of New South Wales and was made Member of the Order of Australia in 2015. She was awarded an Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowship, in Public Health from the NHMRC, in 2014. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decarceration in the United States</span> Overview article

Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. Home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners, the U.S. possess the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding decarceration as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited.

References

  1. ↑ "UCR Publications". FBI. Retrieved 2016-05-25.
  2. 1 2 3 Schwartz, Jennifer; Steffensmeier, Darrell (2008). "Nature of Female Offending: Patterns and Explanation". In Zaplin, Ruth (ed.). Female Offenders: Critical Perspectives and Effective Interventions. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. pp. 43–75.
  3. 1 2 "Thirty Years Of America's Drug War | Drug Wars | FRONTLINE | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2016-05-28.
  4. ↑ "Title 21 United States Code (USC) Controlled Substances Act - Section 812". www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov. Archived from the original on 2020-08-30. Retrieved 2016-05-28.
  5. ↑ "H.R.5484 - Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986". Congress.gov. Library of Congress. September 8, 1986. Retrieved May 28, 2016.
  6. 1 2 Britton, Dana (2011). The Gender of Crime. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
  7. ↑ Bloom, Barbara; Owen, Barbara; Covington, Stephanie (2004-01-01). "Women Offenders and the Gendered Effects of Public Policy1". Review of Policy Research. 21 (1): 31–48. doi:10.1111/j.1541-1338.2004.00056.x. ISSN   1541-1338.
  8. ↑ Beckett, Katherine; Nyrop, Kris; Pfingst, Lori (2006-02-01). "Race, Drugs, and Policing: Understanding Disparities in Drug Delivery Arrests*". Criminology. 44 (1): 105–137. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2006.00044.x. ISSN   1745-9125.
  9. 1 2 Ryder, Judith A.; Brisgone, Regina E. (2013-01-01). "Cracked Perspectives Reflections of Women and Girls in the Aftermath of the Crack Cocaine Era". Feminist Criminology. 8 (1): 40–62. doi:10.1177/1557085112444899. ISSN   1557-0851. S2CID   147638870.
  10. 1 2 Losby, Jan L.; Else, John F.; Kingslow, Marcia E.; Edgcomb, Elaine L.; Malm, Erika T.; Kao, Vivian (December 2002). "Informal Economy Literature Review". The Aspen Institute.
  11. ↑ Robinson, Cyril (1988-01-01). "Introduction: Exploring the Informal Economy". Social Justice. 15 (3/4 (33–34)): 3–16. JSTOR   29766419.
  12. 1 2 3 Philippe, Bourgois (August 1989). "Crack in Spanish Harlem: Culture and Economy in the Inner City". Anthropology Today.
  13. 1 2 Rose, Natasha Du (2015-05-27). The Governance of Female Drug Users: Women's Experiences of Drug Policy. Policy Press. ISBN   9781847426727.
  14. ↑ Maher, Lisa; Daly, Kathleen (November 1996). "Women in the Street-Level Drug Economy: Continuity or Change?". Criminology. 34 (4): 465–492. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.1996.tb01216.x.
  15. 1 2 Maher, Lisa (1997). Sexed Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  16. ↑ Maher, Lisa; Hudson, Susan L. (2007). "Women in the Drug Economy: A Metasynthesis of Qualitative Literature". Journal of Drug Issues. 37 (4): 805–826. doi:10.1177/002204260703700404. S2CID   145168397.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.