The stickup kids.
Item
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Title
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The stickup kids.
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Identifier
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AAI3303798
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identifier
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3303798
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Creator
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Contreras, Randol.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Phillip Kasinitz
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Criminology and Penology
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Abstract
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Since the mid-nineties, U.S. cities have experienced remarkable reductions in street crime and drug offenses. However, for some drug market participants, a waning drug economy, changing police practices, and heightened community surveillance have unintentionally led to a violent drug robbery niche. Through ethnographic fieldwork in a South Bronx neighborhood, I researched former Dominican crack-cocaine dealers who had become drug robbers to continue illegal drug market success. Known on the streets as "stickup kids," these former drug dealers organized to rob drug dealers storing large quantities of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and cash. To understand this phenomenon, this research focused on how larger destructive social, political, and economic factors have contributed to the decisions of these men to remain in a contracting illegal drug market and create a drug robbery niche. This research found that these drug market participants use their previous Crack Era success to measure and understand their current lives. As a result, they have engaged in both more violence and self-destruction as they attempt to maintain high material status and slowly realize that their previous drug dealing success is largely unattainable.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
