Anne E. Pottieger

Kids, Crack, and Crime

As part of a larger study, 254 crime-involved youths in Miami were interviewed on the street about their drug use, crimes and – in more detail – experiences with crack-cocaine. In this strongly drug- and crime–involved sample, greater participation in the crack business was clearly associated with not only more crack use and more drug sales, but also more frequent use of other drugs and more crimes against property and persons. The criminogenic influence of the crack trade is discussed in relation to both media reports and the classic drugs/crime pattern first identified for heroin users.

Crack-Cocaine Use and Street Crime

Most existing research on the relationship between drug use and street crime relates to heroin users and thus predates the widespread availability of crack-cocaine; social science studies of crime among crack users are few in number and focus on a limited set of offense types. This article reports findings from interviews with 387 adult crack users in Miami, Florida, regarding their drug use and criminal histories and their current involvement in a broad range of criminal activities. Many significant differences are noted between the street and treatment subsamples, particularly an earlier drug and crime initiation and a more exclusive focus on one crime type — retail drug sales — among street respondents. Gender differences are markedly smaller, especially in the street sample. Comparisons are also made between the street sample and a similar sample of heroin users interviewed in Miami some ten years earlier.

Gender Bias in Juvenile Justice Handling of Seriously Crime-Involved Youths:

This article is an empirical examination of gender bias in the handling of seriously delinquent youths at three stages of the juvenile justice system: arrest, adjudication, and disposition. The sample included 391 Black and White 14- to 17-year-old youths (100 girls and 291 boys), all heavily involved in crime when they were interviewed on the street during the period 1985-1987 in Miami for a study of drug/crime relationships. The tests for gender bias used controls for pertinent factors identified in prior research: race, type of offense, and level of involvement (for arrests, number of crimes done; for adjudication, age at arrest; and for dispositions, number of prior adjudications). Results indicated a number of significant differences in male and female juvenile justice outcomes. Discussion of these findings emphasizes two offense-particular reasons for gender differences which are not generally discussed, evaluates the evidence of system gender bias for this sample, and traces the methodological implications of this study for future research.

Drug Use and Crime among Two Cohorts of Women Narcotics Users: An Empirical Assessment

The relationship between drug use and crime among women has been given minimal research attention, and the few studies that have been undertaken have relied on arrests to indicate crimes, or have interviewed only institutionalized women or very small street samples. This report describes the drug use and crime of 286 active women narcotics users interviewed on the streets of Miami, Florida in a two-stage project. The first cohort, studied during 1977–78, were heavily involved with a wide variety of drugs and were extremely active in property crimes, vice offenses and drug sales. The second cohort, interviewed during 1983–84, displayed substantially different patterns of both drug use and crime. These differences are analyzed in relationship to changes in drug availability, drug use fads, legislation, law enforcement practices, and historical circumstance.

Cocaine Use Patterns and Overdose

The question of how cocaine overdoses are related to preferred routes of cocaine administration and other aspects of cocaine use patterns is sufficiently complex that very little information is available on it. Even the most extensive information on cocaine overdoses, that of the Drug Abuse Warning Network, is severely limited for purposes of examining this topic. Findings are presented from a 1988-1990 study of a purposive but demographically diverse sample of 699 crack and other cocaine users in Miami, 349 of them interviewed in residential treatment and 350 interviewed on the street. Among these respondents: a history of cocaine overdose is extremely common; overdose episodes do not commonly motivate treatment entry and in some populations are relatively unlikely to result in an emergency room visit; cocaine overdose is less associated with crack smoking than with snorting or intravenous (IV) use, whereas IV use is especially likely to result in overdose; and the street and treatment samples are strikingly different in regard to drug use patterns, overdose history, changes some users made to use patterns as a result of overdose experiences, and reasons given by other users for not making such changes.

Drug Use and Street Crime in Miami: An (Almost) Twenty-Year Retrospective

Researchers at the University of Delaware have been conducting field studies of drug use and crime in Miami, Florida, since 1977. This paper reviews this research and its contributions to understanding drugs-crime relationships. Early studies tested mechanisms for accessing street populations of heroin users and assessing the nature and extent of their drug use and criminality. Subsequent studies targeted a variety of crime-involved heroin and cocaine users, including women as well as men, serious delinquents, adolescent and adult crack users, and cocaine users in treatment as well as on the street. Major findings include the low risk of arrest for income-generating crimes committed by heroin users, and the prevalence of HIV-risk behaviors among both serious delinquents and women crack users. Analyses consistently show the critical importance of sample characteristics in research on drug use, including age, cohort, and street-versus-treatment status.

Drug Use Patterns of Adult Crack Users in Street versus Residential Treatment Samples

Studies of treatment samples have long been the primary source of generalizations about drug users, especially for drugs with very low prevalence rates in the general population, such as heroin and crack. Sample selection bias is briefly discussed, and a 1988-1990 study of 699 cocaine users in Miami is described. The drug patterns of the 387 adult crack users interviewed in that study are compared by sample type--residential treatment versus street, controlling for gender. Some similarities between sample types were found, but differences were more numerous. Notably, street respondents started cocaine at a younger age; had used crack regularly for a longer period of time; were more likely to have used pills, heroin, and freebase cocaine; were much more likely to be using crack (but only crack) on a daily basis; and were more likely to obtain crack by being paid in it, especially for drug dealing. Treatment respondents were more likely to use multiple forms of cocaine, to use cocaine in a binge pattern and with high per-day dosages, and to pay for cocaine with cash they got from a job.

Black Women, Heroin and Crime: Some Empirical Notes

There has been a paucity of literature on the relationship between women, drugs, and crime, and the lack of research focusing upon black women is even more pronounced. The present study focuses on the self-reported drug use and criminal involvement of 63 black female heroin users in Miami, Florida. The data suggest a wide variety of drug use and criminal involvement. Criminal involvement typically begins significantly prior to expensive drug use, which raises serious questions concerning the causal relationship between drugs and crime. Finally, it was found that only a small percentage of the women relied heavily on a single type of criminal activity for income as defined by a particular activity constituting over 50% of their total offenses.

Social relationships of crime-involved women cocaine users.

Abstract Social relationships play a significant role in drug use and recovery, perhaps especially for women. Research on social relationships among crime-involved women drug users is reviewed, including both well established findings and more recent topics of inquiry. Several open questions about social relationships of women drug users are then examined in data from a study conducted in the Miami (Florida) metropolitan area in 1994–1996. For a study of barriers to drug treatment for crime-involved women cocaine users, over 400 women were interviewed in treatment programs and an equal number were recruited on the street. Respondents were asked about their social relationships during the last 30 days on the street in regard to both legal and illegal activities. This included crime partnerships, help obtaining cocaine, living arrangements, help with living expenses, children and help with child care, help with several ordinary problems, and pressures to enter treatment. The analysis looks at how much social support crime-involved women cocaine users have in their ordinary daily activities, who provides this support, and findings from this data set relative to open questions in the literature.

Book Reviews : Women on Heroin, Marsha Rosenbaum. Pp. 196. New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1981.

heroin literature deals with women, and very little of even that work concerns women’s actual lives as addicts. Rosenbaum’s coverage of the subject is far greater than can be found elsewhere, in terms of both experiences unique to female addicts and similarities to the lives of male addicts. After a necessary introduction to the heroin subculture, the book includes a long chapter on the ways women begin heroin use, several chapters analyzing daily life as a female