Title: Looking at Crime from the Street Level.
Series: Research Forum
Author: Sudhir Venkatesh, Richard Curtis, Charles H. Ramsey
Published: National Institute of Justice, November 1999
Subject: Gangs, crime patterns and future trends, crime prevention through
environmental design
28 pages
66,000 bytes

-------------------------------

Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text
file. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat
graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from NCJRS
at 800-851-3420 (877-712-9279 for TTY users).

-------------------------------

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

Looking at Crime From the Street Level

Research Forum

-------------------------------

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno
Attorney General

Raymond C. Fisher
Associate Attorney General

Laurie Robinson
Assistant Attorney General

Noel Brennan
Deputy Assistant Attorney General

Jeremy Travis
Director, National Institute of Justice

-------------------------------

For grant and funding information contact: 

Department of Justice Response Center
800-421-6770

Office of Justice Programs
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

National Institute of Justice
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

-------------------------------

Looking at Crime From the Street Level: Plenary Papers of the 1999
Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Enhancing
Policy and Practice Through Research, Volume 1

Sudhir Venkatesh
Richard Curtis
Charles H. Ramsey

Sponsored by

OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS BUREAUS
National Institute of Justice
Bureau of Justice Assistance
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Office for Victims of Crime

OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS OFFICES
Corrections Program Office
Drug Courts Program Office
Executive Office for Weed and Seed
Violence Against Women Office

November 1999

NCJ 178260

NIJ

Jeremy Travis
Director

John Thomas
Program Monitor

The Professional Conference Series of the National Institute of Justice
supports a variety of live researcher-practitioner exchanges, such as
conferences, workshops, and planning and development meetings, and
provides similar support to the criminal justice field. Foremost among
these forums is the Annual Conference on Criminal Justice Research and
Evaluation. The Research Forum publication series was designed to share
information from this and other forums with a larger audience.

Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of
the U.S. Department of Justice.

-------------------------------

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the
Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

-------------------------------

Contents

Foreword

The Financial Activity of a Modern American Street Gang
Sudhir Venkatesh

The Ethnographic Approach to Studying Drug Crime
Richard Curtis

A Police Chief's View: A Response
Charles H. Ramsey

-------------------------------

Foreward

This year's annual conference on criminal justice research and evaluation
is a milestone of sorts. Some 30 years ago, the President's Commission on
Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice noted with alacrity that
the revolution of scientific discovery had "largely bypassed the problems
of crime and crime control." The method of objective analysis that had
been used with stunning success to raise living standards, help people live
healthier lives, and explore the heavens had unaccountably failed to be
applied to one of the era's most pressing problems. To the great good
fortune of succeeding generations, the Commission in its wisdom
recommended creation of a Federal research agency dedicated to the
scientific study of crime and criminal justice, with the aim of informing
and aiding the work of practitioners. 

The National Institute of Justice, the agency established by Congress to
carry out that mission, has for the past three decades been seeing the
returns on that investment multiply. Criminology has become a respected
field of scholarly inquiry, and we have built an impressive body of
knowledge that has helped us better understand criminal behavior and
the justice system. More important, the results of scholarly inquiries have
been and are being applied to the day-to-day operations of law
enforcement, corrections, the courts, and other elements of the justice
system. 

In the conference, which revisited the Commission with the theme 
"Enhancing Policy and Practice Through Research," we saw how the
investment continues to yield returns. The plenary sessions in particular
emphasized praxis--research put to the service of real-world situations.
Because of the distinctiveness of this year's plenary panels, we decided to
publish them in three separate volumes: viewing crime from the street
level, addressing school violence through research-based policy developed
through an interdisciplinary approach, and understanding the involvement
of women and girls in the criminal justice system.

Sudhir Venkatesh and Richard Curtis bring the ethnographer's perspective
to the analysis of street crime, analyzing, respectively, the financial
activity of gangs and recent trends in drug dealing. Their method, distinct
from that of conventional quantitative social science, calls for intensive
observation over long periods and involves the quest for what is specific to
single places and times and what is generalizable. The close-up,
street-level observations of study subjects offer singular insights for
practitioners who deal with these individuals as offenders. In this panel,
we also benefited from the perspective of Charles Ramsey, Chief of the
Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C. His indication that
drug trafficking and gang crime persist in his jurisdiction despite the
overall drop in crime offers proof of the ethnographer's caution against
facile generalization. 

This year marks the first time the program offices of the Office of Justice
Programs (OJP)--the Corrections Program Office, the Drug Courts
Program Office, the Executive Office for Weed and Seed, and the
Violence Against Women Office--have joined the OJP bureaus as
conference sponsors. Because these offices work so closely with the
practitioner community, I feel their sponsorship is an added expression of
their commitment to research. I think they would endorse Chief Ramsey's
succinct assessment of the role of research in affecting crime levels in the
years to come as bringing to light findings useful for fashioning real-world
solutions. "The best way to predict the future," the Chief said, "is to help
create it." 

Those who wish to read more can find abstracts of the conference sessions
on the World Wide Web at http://www.ilj.org.

Jeremy Travis
Director
National Institute of Justice

-------------------------------

The Financial Activity of a Modern American Street Gang

Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University

The street gang has been a part of the social life of American cities for
more than 150 years. In the mid-1970s, through a dramatic transformation
known as corporatization, street gangs became systematically involved in
underground income-generating activities such as drug distribution and
extortion.[1] The effects of corporate gang activity, including increased
violence and decreased safety of public spaces, are unmistakable and have
received significant attention in the popular and social scientific
communities. However, only a handful of studies on the financial
activities of the corporate street gang have been conducted.[2] Although
their findings are valuable, these studies have provided minimal
quantitative information on the financial dealings of the gang or the
earnings of its individual members.

The ethnographic approach

Quantitatively oriented researchers generally have experienced great
difficulty in procuring information about the financial activities of gangs
and other underground entrepreneurs. The time necessary to gain the trust
of informants and to protect one's role as a researcher makes a
"quick-and-dirty" survey interview difficult to carry out. In this context,
participant-observation techniques--sometimes called ethnography--have
served as a powerful social scientific tool in researching marginal groups.
Classic ethnographic objects of study have included street gangs, victims
of crime and natural disaster, and the homeless.

Ethnographers use close-up observations of, and lengthy discussions with,
gang members to provide answers that statistical surveys cannot capture.
Ethnographic studies may be distinguished by their interest in the meaning
of a given lifestyle for the participants--for example, why individuals join
gangs has been an issue of great concern. 

By "hanging out" with people for extended periods of time, ethnographers
have been able to acquire information on gang activity outside not only the
public eye but also the gaze of many researchers. It is not surprising,
therefore, that much of the conceptual and theoretical insight into gang
activity is produced by ethnographic studies. Information produced by
qualitatively oriented ethnographers also has been valuable for survey
researchers in constructing questionnaires and interview protocols. 

The particular value of ethnography in street gang studies resonates with
the larger use of ethnography in the social sciences. Ethnography has been
useful in giving "voice to the voiceless"--in making information publicly
known about people, groups, and social processes that are ignored,
marginalized, or silenced by the state and media. Ethnography also has
served as a means to provide a more complex, richer portrait than can be
produced using only quantitative data.

The qualitative information produced by ethnographers is no panacea,
however. It is the view of one person (the ethnographer) and is, therefore,
subject to his or her biases. Because of time and monetary constraints,
ethnographers can study only a small group of people; thus, they are often
forced to draw conclusions about gangs in general based on their
knowledge of one or two gangs.

Thus, ethnographic information has not been particularly well integrated
into social science policy--how can national policy be based on the
observations of only one person observing one or two gangs in only one
context?

"Quantitative ethnography"

In this study of the financial activity of a street gang, ethnographic
research techniques were used to obtain quantitative information.
Specifically, numerical data on the economic practices of a street gang
(including wage and nonwage expenditures) were gathered through the use
of participant-observation techniques. The project captured not only
qualitative information on gang members' views, daily activity patterns,
household relations, and other variables but also information on how much
they earned, how their earnings changed as they "aged" in the gang, and
other quantitative data. 

Ethnography was helpful in gathering two data sets that may assist in the
policy arena. In developing the first data set, the ethnographer contacted a
former gang member who had access to the financial records maintained
by a single gang for a 4-year period between 1988 and 1995 (to protect
confidentiality, the exact dates cannot be revealed). These "books"
recorded the price and quantity of drugs sold; other sources of revenue;
and gang expenditures for wages, weapons, funerals, and other items. The
gang leader had updated the data monthly to manage the gang's financial
activities.

In developing the second data set, the ethnographer worked with a
macroeconomist to conduct longitudinal tracking of nearly one dozen
gangs in a large city. Data on wages and expenditures were periodically
collected from many different drug dealers in the city. This ongoing 
observation of gangs was intended to produce a taxonomy of the various
organizational structures in which drug trafficking takes place (and to
identify the most lucrative and successful) and a model of how gang
members age throughout their tenure in the gang. Questions answered
included when and why members left the gang and how much they earned
over the course of their involvement.

Findings: Gang revenues and expenditures

Results indicated that ethnography can be a productive technique to study
criminal processes. It can provide extremely valuable observations of
difficult-to-reach social groups and also can be used with survey and
interview protocols to yield quantitative information. 

The financial books kept by a large, now-defunct street gang reveal that
the gang sustained a lucrative operation. The gang, consisting of several
hundred members, included a leadership class (typically, a leader and 3
officers); a "foot soldier" class (ranging from 25 to 100 members aged 16
to 25 years) that sold drugs; and "rank and file" members (usually 200
persons younger than high school age) who were not allowed to conduct
entrepreneurial activities. More than 70 percent of the gang's total annual
revenue of approximately $280,000 was generated from the sale of crack
cocaine. Dues provided some additional gang revenue (approximately 25
percent), and extortion directed at local businesses and entrepreneurs
represented a small fraction of revenues (about 5 percent). The gang
operated in a neighborhood of roughly four city blocks (eight blocks to a
mile).

Costs were subdivided into nonwage and wage expenses. The single
greatest nonwage expenditure was the purchase of wholesale powder
cocaine. Tribute payments by the leader to the central gang leadership
holding authority over the gang represented the local gang's second
greatest nonwage expenditure, accounting for nearly $50,000 annually
(more than 15 percent of the total revenue).

In return for this payment, local gang members received protection on the
streets and, more critically, in prison; some help in finding and
maintaining supplier networks; and the opportunity to rise in the
organization and extract tribute from other local gangs. Another nonwage
gang expense was payment to mercenary fighters (known as warriors),
who performed some of the most dangerous tasks (such as drive-by
shootings and guarding key drug-selling locations during gang wars).
These warriors, typically former gang members with reputations for
bravery and violence, were held on retainer by the gang. Funerals and
payments to families of the deceased were a nontrivial expense for the
gang. When a gang member was killed, the gang paid funeral expenses
and typically provided compensation to the slain member's family. The
total average cost to the gang was $5,000 per funeral, a large amount
compared with the annual wage payment to the typical foot soldier 
(averaging less than $2,000 per year).

Wage costs were divided into two categories: expenditures for officers and
those for foot soldiers. The gang leader retained between $4,200 and
$10,900 per month, for an annual wage of $50,000 (year 1) to $130,000
(year 4). Officers (for example, the runner, enforcer, or treasurer) earned
roughly $1,000 per month working full time, and most did not work in
legitimate jobs simultaneously. The typical foot soldier was paid about
$200 per month and worked approximately 20 hours per week, implying
an hourly wage well below the Federal minimum. But foot soldiers also
were allowed to sell marijuana and heroin outside the gang structure--the
gang sold only crack cocaine. Calculations indicated that the average foot
soldier's hourly wage ranged from $5.90 to $11.10 during the 4-year
period.

On the surface, the wage range available to foot soldiers was substantially
greater than the minimum wage available to these poorly educated
inner-city youths through legitimate employment. However, as shown in
the table below, risk calculations based on the gang's own tally of injuries,
deaths, and arrests, combined with ethnographic observations, indicate,
not surprisingly, that street-level drug distribution is an extremely risky
business. The annual death rate among the gang's foot soldiers was 4.2
percent--more than 40 times the national average for African-American
males in the 16- to 25-year-old age group. On average, a drug seller could
expect 0.59 wounds (virtually all from bullets) and 1.43 arrests each year.
The most alarming statistic is that gang members who were active for the
entire 4-year period had roughly a 25-percent chance of dying.
Furthermore, there was an average of more than two nonfatal injuries
(mostly gunshot injuries) per member and nearly six arrests for the 4-year
period.

By comparison, homicide victimization rates for black males aged 14 to
17 in the United States are roughly 1 in 1,000 per year, or about 100 times
lower than observed in this sample. Even among rank-and-file members of
this gang (for example, those affiliated with the gang but not actively
engaged in the drug trade), homicide rates are only 1 in 200 annually in
this sample.

The nonofficer stratum within the corporate gang endures risky work
conditions for the opportunity to move up in the gang's hierarchy and to
earn a more significant salary. In economics, this situation is referred to as
a "tournament"--an opportunity structure similar in some respects to that
of medical residents or associates in law firms. However, even when
factoring in the probability of moving up in the gang organization, the
expected wage of the average gang member during his tenure in the gang
is only $7 per hour. This wage does not seem high enough to counter the
tremendous risks of injury, arrest, and death inherent in the drug trade.

What motivates gang participation?

Given the findings that the majority of individuals in the gang are poorly
compensated and face grave risks, the clear question is, Why would gang
members choose to participate in such activities? Those studying corporate
gang activity tend to explain gang involvement by emphasizing either
economic attractions or symbolic factors. In the economic model, gang
members are entrepreneurs who rely on the gang for material benefits
because they are unwilling to accept the mainstream opportunities
available to them or because they have not encountered much success in
the legitimate labor force. In this study, most gang members never realize
significant material gain, so an economic-based explanation is not
sufficient in itself. Symbolic theories emphasize the role of ideologies
such as "family" that afford gang members a basis for personal and
collective identity in social ecologies of impoverishment and minimal
mainstream resources. Gang members do find in corporate gang activity a
measure of peer group support and a sense of belonging to a larger
community; however, these symbolic benefits alone also seem to be
incapable of sustaining motivation in gang-based entrepreneurialism over
an extended time period, perhaps because gang members eventually find
social support from peers who are not affiliated with gangs. 

Indeed, the life-course appears to be the best perspective from which to
understand the interaction of symbolic and economic incentives.
Ethnographic observations of several gangs over an extended period of
time indicate an aging-out pattern. For example, at the most basic level, 
the successful corporate gang will provide for all of its members an 
immediate wage and a direct sense of community and identity. The 
significance of these two benefits changes, however, as the individual
member ages. In his role as an entering foot soldier, the member has few
financial commitments, and so gang involvement makes possible fairly
continuous consumption and provides an alternative to menial work in the
service sector, along with the fellowship of one's peers. The younger foot
soldier is motivated to stay in the gang by the prospect of a potentially
lucrative salary as an officer. However, for the older, more experienced
drug trader, one with perhaps a growing number of financial and familial
commitments, the immediate economic wage is no longer sufficient;
similarly, while the benefits of the peer group continue to exist,
opportunities for high income and promotion in the gang diminish. It is at
this point that most of the gang members in this sample abdicated their
involvement in the gang's entrepreneurial activities and chose instead to
direct their energies to the mainstream labor market. While many
continued to participate in the gang's social activities, the symbolic
attraction of dramatic future material rewards appeared to lose its
motivating capacity.

Faced with continuous turnover, the gang brings aboard new recruits who
are sustained by the objectively very slim--but symbolically very
powerful--belief that they will achieve substantial earnings while working
for the gang. In this manner, the individuals composing the gang are
continually changing while the overall structure of the gang remains 
constant. Nearly every other corporate, metropolitan area variant examined
is characterized by this basic structure--there exist both a young cohort
motivated by the remote possibility of substantial earnings and an older
adult contingent that grows disillusioned with the gang as an adequate
employment prospect but relies on the gang for supplemental income
(until a full-time legitimate job at a competitive wage is found) and for
peer group support. Preliminary study results suggest that both younger
and older gang members are motivated by material attractions as well as
the benefits of membership in a company of like-minded peers. Further
research is clearly necessary, however, to understand the precise role of
symbolic and economic motivations.

Data authenticity, validity, and usefulness

Never before have such detailed financial data from a street gang been
available for scholarly inspection. The existence of such data raises
important questions regarding authenticity and validity. On the question of
authenticity, there is no reason to doubt that these records actually reflect
data that the gang compiled on a monthly basis. During the ethnographic
phase of data collection, the researchers learned of several gangs that were
monitoring their financial activities. The researchers were not given access
to these data until after the gangs had dissolved and word was received
that the records could be made available. The general knowledge among
those in the city's law enforcement and social service communities that
some street gangs record their financial activities, and that many leaders
have documented on paper their personal portfolios, provides additional
confidence in the data set (indeed, a recent trial of a police officer accused
of assisting gang drug operations used a gang's books as part of its
evidence). 

The question of validity is more problematic. The study data were 
compiled by hand and stored in notebooks or on scraps of paper. Those 
responsible for keeping the data had no formal training in accounting.
Several possible biases in the data necessitate viewing the results obtained
as a lower bound on the profitability of the gang. First, although used
primarily for tracking day-to-day gang operations, the data were also
intended to serve as a means by which the gang leader could credibly
report to his superiors about profitability or lack of profitability. 

This second use of the data raises the possibility that the scale of the
operation as a whole was consciously understated--the less money the
gang earned, the smaller the monetary tribute that had to be given each
month to the leader's superior officer. Also, the gang leader had great
flexibility to make "off-the-books" arrangements, such as allowing
individual members to sell goods on their own for a small fee payable to
the gang, or allowing other local entrepreneurs to sell illicit goods for a
similar fee. Finally, the gang also permitted its own members or others in
the community to sell marijuana, heroin, or amphetamines in exchange for
payment of a monthly "tax." Neither the leader's independent activities nor
the sales of these other drugs are reflected in the data. However, both of
these revenue sources are likely to be minor when compared with the sale
of crack cocaine. 

Despite concerns regarding authenticity and validity, ethnographic
methods open doors for subsequent policy-relevant research that could be
used by social scientists. The receipt of a gang's financial records is one
benefit. However, this study's model of the life-course aging process was
also a product of ethnographic observation of several gangs throughout the
city. Ethnography was used as an initial screening device to gain
information about the range of different organizational structures that
gangs adopt. Once this "universe" of gang organizational types was
formed, it was possible to form a smaller sample and to interview gang
members and track their wages/expenditures over an extended period. The
outcome was the empirical data on drug trafficking that are representative
of gangs throughout the city--not just one region or one organizational
type. Moreover, the breadth of ethnographic participation yielded insights
into the developmental trajectory of gang members (that is, how they age
and at what points particular forms of intervention might be useful).

Although more research of this type is needed, this study offers a
preliminary basis from which to analyze the motivations for individual
participation in the corporate gang. In light of tremendously skewed wage
distribution, a life-course perspective was employed to account for the
economic and symbolic incentives of individual corporate gang
involvement. Throughout their tenure, gang members move in and out of
the service sector and so rely on the gang for both an immediate (but
pecuniary) wage and for support and friendship. However, over the course
of their involvement in the gang, as members realize that their opportunity
to move higher in the gang hierarchy is diminishing, the possibility of
lucrative earnings loses its attractive potential and members grow
disillusioned with the gang as a viable sphere of economic mobility. Thus,
most young adult members withdraw from full-time involvement in the
gang's economic activities and become primarily social members.

Recommendations: Jobs are key

The fact that gang wages are so low and most gang members work at least
sporadically in the legitimate sector suggests that public policies designed
to encourage greater labor market participation and discourage gang
involvement may be successful. To be optimally effective, such policies
must recognize the differing motivations for participation among younger
drug sellers and those in their adult years. Policies that attempt simply to
replace gang-based drug dealing with jobs in the service sector will not be
as successful in limiting gang recruitment and countering the dream of
underground economic mobility. Indeed, for young members, in addition
to peer affirmation, it is the illusion of riches and rewards that is an
overwhelming attraction of the corporate gang. For them, the gang must be
countered with another meaningful ideal of social mobility and
self-efficacy.

As members age, peer group support and identity continue to be important
motives for remaining in the gang, but the gang also becomes an employer
of last resort, furnishing income in contexts where other opportunities may
be limited. For this group, direct job creation may have a more lasting
impact in offering a real exit mechanism by which older members can end
their involvement in drug economies. 

Notes 

1. Taylor, Carl S., Dangerous Society, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State
Press, 1990.

2. Padilla, Felix, The Gang as an American Enterprise, New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992; Bourgois, Philippe, In Search of
Respect, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1989; and
Jankowski, Martin S., Islands in the Street, Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1991.

-------------------------------

The Ethnographic Approach to Studying Drug Crime

Richard Curtis, Ph.D., John Jay College of Criminal Justice

I am an ethnographer specializing in the study of illegal drugs, primarily in
New York City neighborhoods, and I will address "crime from the street
level." Those who might think I could talk with more authority about
crime from the victim's rather than the offender's perspective could not be
more wrong. In fact, after more than 20 years of intensive and extensive
street-level research in New York City's most dangerous neighborhoods, I
have never been harmed or have even really feared for my physical
safety--except occasionally because of nervous police officers who are
surprised to find me in what they consider to be hostile territory, like crack
houses or shooting galleries. For the past 10 years I've lived in
Brownsville, Brooklyn--Mike Tyson's boyhood neighborhood and the
one-time homicide capital of New York City--where my two daughters
attend public school and where I've become quite involved in community
affairs. My reasons for living in Brownsville are complex. They include
my commitment to improving the inner city and my belief that if I want to
"talk the talk," I need to "walk the walk." I have never regretted my
decision.

What does an ethnographer do?

Ethnographers do many different things. For example, a recent New York
Times article described how corporations are increasingly turning to
ethnographers to better understand how people use their products so that
they can devise improvements. The work of an ethnographer--data
collection--involves observing individuals over prolonged periods of time
and interviewing them about topics of interest. Ethnographers typically
study relatively small groups of people, and although we hope that such
intensive scrutiny might lead to generalizations that can be applied to other
groups across time and space, that is not always the case. What an
ethnographer learns about drug dealing in Harlem or Brooklyn may or
may not have relevance to policymakers and public officials outside New
York City, except that trends beginning in New York sometimes spread
elsewhere. 

One might simply say that ethnographers study people's everyday lives.
While I do study people's everyday lives, the people I study are involved
in illegal activities--typically, selling or using drugs. 

Individuals unfamiliar with the streets or the populations I study often
want to know how I actually do the work. First, I am always
straightforward about what I am doing with the people I would like to
know better. I try never to deceive anyone or misrepresent myself.
Sometimes, I initially simplify the story because people often become
suspicious when a complicated research agenda is presented at the
beginning of a relationship. In those cases, I usually tell people that I am
writing a book about drugs and would appreciate their help and opinions.
Later, if they are interested, I explain the purpose of the study in greater
detail.

Second, I carry no protection while doing research; I rely on the
relationships that I develop to ensure my safety. I do not own a gun or
carry a knife or any other kind of protection device, and people are
generally aware of this. This actually works to my advantage because
research subjects are often so concerned about my well-being while I am
working in "neighborhood minefields" that they feel obliged to accompany
me to ensure my safe passage. On more than one occasion, local "tough
guys" who felt it necessary to play bodyguard because they thought I was
a walking target for stickup artists were shocked and appalled at how
readily I entered crack houses and shooting galleries that even they had
been afraid to enter. When they discovered that everyone inside knew me,
they were even more surprised. While I do not mean to minimize the
dangers involved in this line of work--and there are some if you do not
know what you are doing--I have always felt extraordinarily protected by
those around me.

Finally, I try to leave the work in the street when I return home at night.
Although I make no secret of my address and telephone number (I am
listed in the telephone book), people generally respect my privacy. In
emergencies, they know they can call me.

Lessons from the street level

I wish to convey some idea of how my research subjects think about crime
and offending. It was very difficult to decide what to relate that might be
useful or lead people to think about things from a different perspective.
The first problem that occurred to me when I started to consider the topic
was that there is no single "criminal perspective" on crime. Since my 
particular areas of interest have been drug distribution and use, I count
among my acquaintances--and sometimes my friends--hundreds of drug
dealers and users. The opinions and attitudes of drug dealers and users
vary as much as anyone else's, although there are some broad trends
(which I will discuss later). In this paper I will share several lessons I have
learned from the street level.

Don't make assumptions about what people believe

I have learned--and continue to relearn with disturbing frequency--that it is
not wise to make assumptions about people and then act on those
assumptions. For example, I used to think that because police and drug
dealers are adversaries they naturally dislike each other. Certainly, I have
heard drug dealers rail about how aggressive policing has affected their
business and how particular police officers seem to single them out for
harsh (and, in their eyes, unjustified) treatment. I have also heard police
officers complain about the "scourge" of drug dealing and talk about
dealers and users as though they are subhuman. My conversation with the
owner of a midsized crack business in Brooklyn illustrates another aspect
of this issue.

I had been eager to meet this individual, but I knew he was anxious about
being "set up" by the police. I thought I might ease his fears about me by
commiserating with him--by telling him about my own problems with a
pair of officers in his precinct who had a history of abusive behavior. As I
described my difficulties with these two officers, trying hard to establish
my pedigree--my legitimacy--a funny grin came over his face. I finally
stopped and asked what he found so amusing. He told me that one of the
officers I had mentioned was a member of the paint ball team that he
leads. I scratched my head and asked, "Now, let me get this right, Monday
through Friday you shoot bullets at each other, but on Saturday and
Sunday you shoot paint balls?!" "That's right," he said. He didn't seem to
have any problem with the concept, but it took me a little while to digest
what he had said and understand its implications. 

A general lesson was learned here: Don't make assumptions about what
people believe. Assumptions can get you into trouble. A more specific
lesson was also learned: Residents of inner-city neighborhoods that have
been heavily policed have sophisticated attitudes and complex feelings
toward law enforcement. The more I thought about what he told me, the
more it made sense--sort of. 

In some ways, law enforcement officers and drug dealers are two sides of
the same coin, and it should not be so surprising that they know each other
so intimately. In many ways, selling drugs--or pursuing those who
do--represents the major employment opportunity for youths from these
neighborhoods. I know many dealers who have aspired to be law
enforcement officers and many police officers who have "checkered"
backgrounds.

Rates and types of crime vary by neighborhood

The challenge of ethnography is to find out what is specific to one place
and time and what has more general implications. The only way this can
be accomplished is by undertaking comparative studies over a prolonged
period of time.

A main point of one of my earliest comparative studies was the idea that
the rates and types of crime vary by neighborhood. The results of this
study, published in the late 1980s in Getting Paid, by Mercer Sullivan,
indicated that crime varies by neighborhood for perhaps two main
reasons.[1] First, there are different opportunities for crime depending on
where an individual lives. For example, in neighborhoods adjacent to 
industrial areas, factory break-ins are common; in neighborhoods with few
commercial areas but dominated by highrise apartment buildings,
robberies and crimes like chain- or purse-snatching are more common. 

The second reason crime varies is "collective efficacy"--that is,
neighborhoods are more or less able to exert influence over those who
commit crimes. The idea is that crime will likely be lower in
neighborhoods where there is "mutual trust among neighbors combined
with willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good, specifically
to supervise children and maintain public order."[2]

It was no coincidence that the largest, most violent street-level drug
distribution organizations studied were located in neighborhoods where
community cohesion was the weakest. Just as the types of crime varied by
neighborhood, the attitudes of offenders also varied greatly, depending on
where they lived. Offenders also live in communities, and even if one
believes they are biologically or psychologically predisposed to crime or
antisocial behavior, their outlooks and orientations toward life are forged
and honed in the context of families and neighborhood groups. Only by
placing the behavior of offenders within the context of a community can
we decipher whether their acts are consistent with that environment or
aberrations that require deeper scrutiny.

Crime rates vary over time

The fact that crime rates also vary over time is, in my opinion, one of the
most interesting aspects of my research. Even the most casual observer
will likely have heard at the end of the 1990s that serious crime is down in
almost every major American city. The drop in crime has astounded and
delighted the pundits, the policymakers, and the general public, although
no one seems to know exactly why it has happened. One reason it has been
so surprising is that it seems to contradict a fundamental assumption upon
which much of the adult world rests: that youngsters have no respect for
their elders. If you buy into this idea, then each successive generation has
to be a little worse than the one preceding it. (My mother, who each
morning walked 14 miles to school barefoot in the snow, is sure this is the
case.) The academic proponents of this idea--most notably, John J. DiIulio
and William J. Bennett--take the idea to its logical conclusion and tell us
that our "criminogenic" inner cities are producing "amoral" kids who will
grow up to be "superpredators." They seem to feel that our undoing, like
that of the Roman Empire, will not come from external enemies but,
rather, from a rotten core. The drop in crime has to be shocking for these
doomsday prophets because the steepest drops came in precisely the areas
that they had considered almost unsalvageable--minority neighborhoods in
the inner cities.

While public officials and governmental agencies scramble to take credit
for this unexpected, improbable, and fortuitous turn of events, few
observers have bothered to solicit the opinions of the offenders themselves
about why they seem to be committing fewer crimes. Again, it is worth
noting that offenders do not form their opinions and attitudes in a
vacuum--they do so in the context of families, peer groups, and
communities, and all of these clearly evolve over time. 

In the neighborhoods where I work, the beginnings of the shift in the
prevailing current on the streets were first noticed in 1988. It was then,
while I was working for the Vera Institute of Justice evaluating the 
effectiveness of the New York City Police Department's Tactical
Narcotics Team, that I first noticed young crack dealers exhorting their
crack-selling peers to avoid consuming the product. At first, I thought this
was motivated simply by a profit motive, and clearly that was part of the
story, but the larger picture was more significant and, eventually, the ethos
first developed and espoused by these youths extended outward and was
picked up and refined by groups of youths who had little to do with selling
drugs. 

For lack of a better description, I will call this new identity "anti-drug
dealer chic." This new identity was an explicit repudiation of the excesses
of the crack era. Youngsters no longer aspired to be big-time drug dealers.
Even some drug dealers no longer wanted to be identified as such. Gone
was the "Mr. T" look characterized by wearing gaudy jewelry. Where drug
dealers in the 1980s advertised their success through the purchase of
consumer display items, dealers in the middle to late 1990s have preferred
an understated style, making them, in many respects, indistinguishable
from their peers. 

It is not simply outward appearances that have changed among the new
generation of drug dealers. In their view, their predecessors made two
glaring errors: (1) they used the product they sold, resulting in a tragic loss
of self-control whose spillover hurt their families, neighbors, and
communities; and (2) they didn't know how to handle "success." Lacking
a sensible approach to business, they brought chaos, unprecedented levels
of violence, and an army of drug warriors to their neighborhoods. 

The dealers of the late 1990s are, in many ways, "control freaks"

In their personal habits, the new generation of dealers believe in keeping a
tight rein on the use of mind-altering substances. For many, marijuana is
the only substance consumed because it allows users to "keep their wits
about them" regardless of how much they smoke. Even alcohol, once
aggressively marketed in minority neighborhoods in 40-ounce bottles of
malt liquor, is shunned by many youths who dislike its stultifying effect.
Crack or heroin use is strictly taboo--so much so that in two studies I am
currently conducting we are experiencing great difficulty in locating
young people who use these substances. Although sniffing cocaine is
tolerated, users are not lionized by their peers as they were in the 1980s;
indeed, they are praised for their ability to show restraint at the end of the
night when the compulsion to buy more is strongest.

Strictly regulating the intake of substances that go into one's body is only
one facet of the control that the current generation of young people seek to
impose on their daily lives. While the 1980s were characterized by
out-of-control drug markets that featured gratuitous and often undirected
violence as a hallmark, the reconfigured drug markets of the late 1990s are
comparatively docile, discreet, and orderly. They are also much smaller
and offer far fewer financial rewards to those who become involved in
them. For this generation, selling drugs is much more like a job flipping
burgers than it is the pursuit of fame, infamy, or fortune. For many young
men, the current unattractiveness of drug selling is compounded by the
widespread repudiation of that lifestyle by young women who frequently
and consistently reinforce the message that they will not date drug dealers.
Believe me when I tell you that appealing directly to the libido is a
powerful motivating force for young men!

In many respects, these changes in the attitudes and actions of drug dealers
and users are astounding, but they are even more remarkable because they
arose from the grassroots without any support or intervention from
governmental sources. If only we could bottle what has happened. What is
most alarming to me is that the significance of these fundamental shifts
has been almost totally misread or ignored by those with the power to do
something about it. Rather than capitalizing on the tendencies toward
moderation that the current generation of young people so clearly
demonstrate, we continue to act as though we are at the height of the crack
epidemic, beefing up drug squads and incarcerating people at
unprecedented rates for increasingly petty drug-related charges. If ever
there were a recipe for disaster, surely this is it.

Learning from the lessons of the past

I would like to share a few observations about how we have waged the war
on drugs. A consensus that the tally sheet is awash in red ink seems to be
growing and, surely, the cost of the war in dollars and cents is more than
most of us had bargained for. The social costs also seem to be
extraordinarily high. In New York, there has been a push to soften the
punitive Rockefeller drug laws, and several other States have already
taken steps in that direction. 

From the experience of having worked extensively in neighborhoods that
have been the primary battlegrounds in this war, I have seen that the
expected outcomes of certain actions are always greatly outnumbered by
the unintended consequences. Sometimes the unintended results of those
actions are beneficial, but mostly they are not. 

The plight of middle-aged ex-prisoners is just one example. During the
past 2 years, we have noticed that many of the men who had been locked
up in the late 1980s and early 1990s have been released from prison. We
could reasonably expect that their transition back to their neighborhoods
would be fraught with difficulties, especially for minority men whose
opportunities are limited, but their problems have been even more severe
than could have been anticipated. For instance, finding that their peers
who were fortunate enough to have escaped the drug wars relatively
unscathed have moved on, many returnees revisit their old haunts, seeking
to reconnect with the past. Coming back to an altered urban terrain, many
of these middle-aged men attach themselves to street-corner groups whose
members are as young as 13 or 14. Forced to jockey for position in the
pecking order of these groups, middle-aged ex-prisoners frequently find
themselves challenged by young men eager to build a reputation in the
street. When these guys say that young people today don't respect their
elders, they have the stitches and broken bones to prove it. While some
people would have little sympathy for the plight of these men, their
presence on the street is likely to have a significant impact on the children,
teenagers, and young adults who bear witness to the inversion of age and
respect, both of which are, in a "normal" world, supposed to grow together
over time. 

What we did in 1989 is still reverberating in 1999, and that echo is likely
to last a lot longer. What we do today will likely have an impact well into
the next century. It is my hope that, as we reformulate drug policy based
on the lessons of the past, we do so not only with short-term goals in mind
but also with the knowledge that such interventions are likely to have
long-lasting repercussions that may far outweigh their momentary gains.

Notes

1. Sullivan, M.L., Getting Paid: Economy, Culture, and Youth Crime in
the Inner City, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.

2. Sampson, R.J., S.W. Raudenbush, and F. Earls, "Neighborhoods and
Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy," Science 277 
(August 15, 1997): 1-7. 

-------------------------------

A Police Chief's View: A Response 

Charles H. Ramsey
Chief, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C.

To the question of what proportion of crime can be accounted for by gang
activity, I would reply that it is difficult to really get a good handle on how
much is actually committed by gang members or drug dealers. Often,
when crimes are committed, we don't really know the motivation behind
the crime. A significant amount, however, is committed as a result of our
drug trafficking problems here in the District of Columbia as well as gang
activity in the District. 

Gang crime and drug crime persist 

I wish these gang-bangers in New York or in whatever sites you were
studying would come to D.C., because those in D.C. apparently haven't
yet gotten the message that this kind of activity is on the decline. We've
had a decline in crime overall here, but we've still got a tremendous
amount of violent activity by members of street gangs here in the District. 

My perspective on what these young people are thinking and doing when
they first join gangs is that, for one thing, they are unemployable. They are
frequently high school dropouts; they have no skills. Where are they going
in life? Crime itself becomes a job for many of them because they don't
see any alternative. They climb the "pyramid" of the criminal enterprise by
eliminating the competition. So they're able to maneuver and do things
based on just the rule of the street. And that's still very, very appealing to
a lot of these kids.

When I was in Chicago recently, I went to the theme park Great America
with my son. We saw two young men walking down the midway wearing
T-shirts that read "Living the Life of a Thug." That was the message on
the T-shirt! There was the big "thug" on the front, and the men wore caps
with a gravestone design on them with the saying "Rest in Peace" and that
kind of thing. Now, they apparently did not get the message that this is no
longer glamorous, because they seemed quite proud of what they were
doing. When you're dealing with that kind of mentality, it's difficult to
really break through.

I think the value of research like we have heard presented here, though, is
that from it there are some prevention and intervention strategies for some
of the "borderline" kids--some of the ones who haven't yet quite crossed
the line into crime. But with many of them, when you ask how do they get
out of the cycle of selling drugs so they can get a job (as if it's possible for
them to get a job with IBM or some similar firm), I think we need to face
the reality that we've got a lot of very profound social problems that are
putting people into positions in which they have no alternatives. People
are going to eat. You're going to provide for your family. You're going to
provide for yourself. If you can't do it legitimately, you're going to do it in
a criminal way. That's the situation we find ourselves in, in my opinion. 

What explains the drop in crime? 

If, as the speakers have said, the large drug-dealing organizations are out
of business or have been dismantled, the question is why. Could it be 
because all of them suddenly just realized that selling drugs was
wrong--that it's destroying their families, it's destroying their friends, it's
destroying their lives--so they decided to just get out of the business? Or 
is it because they were arrested, they were put in jail, and now the whole
structure has been disrupted? And if so, as a result, do you now have lower
level entrepreneurs who haven't yet become sophisticated enough to have
the kind of connections that some of the other ones do? They'll grow into
it, but they haven't gotten there yet. Is that the reason?

I don't quite understand. In one sense, we're saying that this is happening
because people have finally learned about the dangers of drugs and,
doggone it, they're changing their lives. But another reason given is that
some of them--many of the larger organizations--have been dismantled.
That's now given as the reason. I have trouble keeping up with why we're
seeing the situation we have now if, in fact, there is a decline in drug
trafficking across the country, or at least in New York. 

When the speakers say the use of crack cocaine has declined and there has
been a shift to marijuana use, they seem to be saying it's the lesser of two
evils. I've worked in narcotics for many years, and what I've seen is that
if there is increasing heroin use, there usually is a decline in cocaine use. If
you have an increase in cocaine use, then you have a decline in heroin use.
Marijuana is always there. A lot of the traffickers found out that they did a
lot less time in prison trafficking in marijuana, and they were able to make
an extraordinary amount of money trafficking in marijuana with much less
risk. Many of these major trafficking organizations, including the ones that
were running heroin and cocaine, began running marijuana. 

Once, when we made a seizure, what I thought was 200 kilos of cocaine
was 200 kilos of marijuana packaged exactly like cocaine. It was about 10
to 15 years ago when we started seeing more and more and more and more
of it. So the drug of choice just seems to shift from one to the other. There
is a need in our society for people to somehow escape--either through
alcohol, through marijuana, through cocaine, or through some synthetic
drug that will take its place. I don't know if people are wising up or if it's
that some other drug is replaced for a while and then it shifts back. 

What is happening on the streets that's helping to bring crime rates down
is, for one thing, the strong economy. And I agree that there are
alternatives to involvement in crime. A lot of people who get involved in
criminal activity do so because there are no other options. If there is a
stronger economy or something else that gives them an option, many of
them will take it. I think you can't overlook that. I also think you have to
look at policing strategies, involvement of the community, and all that sort
of thing as reasons for the decline in crime.

Reaching young people 

It's a very complex issue. I don't think people understand fully why the
crime rate goes up, and they don't understand fully why it goes down. I
know one thing: I will not take credit for crime declines, because then I've
got to take the blame when crime goes up! It's a two-edged
sword--eventually, the rate will go up. We've all been around long enough
to know there are cycles. I think it's the year 2009 or 2010 when the
teenage population is going to increase by almost 9 percent. History tells
us that could present a problem. But if we start working with those young
kids now and do something now to provide opportunities for them, then
many of them will not choose the path of crime. Some will, but most will
not. 

We have to act now. And that's where research plays a very valuable role.
Because of research we know these kinds of things. The best way to
predict the future is to help create it. If you know that, then you must start
now taking steps to reach those kids so they aren't at the crossroads in
2010, and we're all still sitting here having this discussion about the rising
crime rates rather than the declining crime rates. 

Decriminalization is not the answer 

As to suggestions to relax the drug laws, you know what my reaction is
going to be. I just don't believe in doing that. I think we just have to be a
little smarter. I think the biggest breakdown in our so-called War on Drugs
has been that we have not provided money for treatment and prevention.
We've always put money on the enforcement end--as if incarcerating our
way out of our problem is going to be the solution. I think it was back in
the 1960s and 1970s when we first started talking about the dangers of
cigarette smoking, and we basically changed an entire culture--away from
smoking cigarettes. Now you're starting to see it come back again because
we felt we had the problem licked and so we stopped the campaign. Now
you are starting to see younger and younger people smoking. But you can
do it again if you really pay attention to prevention and intervention
strategies and, in the case of drugs, of course, treatment. 

You've got to get people off drugs. Making drugs more available by
relaxing the laws is going to have an impact on whom? Minority
communities are where it would be the most devastating. Do you think
that they're going to open a clinic in Georgetown and let you go there to
buy all the crack cocaine or heroin you want? No. It's going to be in
Southeast D.C. if it's anywhere. That's exactly what's going to happen if
we relax the drug laws. The communities hit by drugs now are going to be
the same ones hit if we try to legalize it. I personally think that legalization
is just not an option. 

Avoiding truancy by instilling hope 

Truancy is a serious problem, but I don't think anybody really wants to
take ownership of it. When you talk to one group, they will say it's the
police who should be picking these kids up. Another group will say it's
the schools that are responsible. I don't know where the parents figure into
it. It's always some government institution--not the parents--that's said to
be responsible. It's very important that you keep these children in school. I
agree with the statement that most kids drop out around 9th or 10th grade.
At a high school in Chicago on the west side where I worked for about 17
years, we'd get a freshmen class of 500 kids, but 4 years later we'd
graduate maybe 120. What happened to the others? Many dropped out,
and usually it was when they were in 9th and 10th grade. 

No one was there--no counselors, no one--to help them adjust to this new
school environment. Nobody was there, when they first started skipping
class, to take them and bring them in and talk to the parents and do that
sort of thing. We seem to treat truancy as just a minor offense, but we
don't recognize that it leads to other kinds of behavior in the long term.
That uneducated kid is the one who's going to have to turn to a life of
crime because what else can he do?

However, during the time I worked at that high school, I also saw kids
who came out of horrible circumstances who really did very well in
school. They went on to college and they did a lot of positive things. You
wondered how they did it. In each and every case, they had something that
was a kind of hope for them, whether it was athletics, a positive role
model, a mentor, or the church. For these kids there was always something
that served as a symbol of hope when they were surrounded by things that
were very, very negative. In cases where there are children whose
environment is negative, they've got to have something to hold onto.
There are very many kids who do have this, and in a lot of cases, it's just
their parents. 

Special populations at risk 

As to an increase in women's or young girls' involvement in gang
activity, I've not seen anything that would really lead me to believe there
has been such an increase. But there has been an increase in media
coverage of it. Here in D.C., the media jumped on a couple of cases and
made a big story about girls in gangs. There have always been a few girls
who have been involved, but I've not seen anything significant. When
something like that captures the attention of the media and they start to
talk about it, it conveys the impression that there's been a dramatic
increase. There may, indeed, be somewhat of an increase; I'm not saying
there is none. But the increase hasn't been so noticeable that everybody in
the department is talking about it and that we're doing anything special to
really try to get a handle on it. 

There have been female gangs in Chicago, for example, where a few were
affiliated directly with specific gangs. I know the Latin Kings, the
Disciples--all the bigger gangs--had female factions. Many of them date
gang members, and they may hold drugs, or they may hold guns and do
those kinds of things. That is nothing new. To the question of whether
there has been an increase in female gang activity, I would say I've not
seen a rise, although it is a serious problem. I don't know if they're
included in research studies, but they're out there. 

In terms of changing demographics, I haven't seen anything in D.C. that
would indicate the pattern that's been suggested (the movement of some
people from Central America into gang activity). We have Latino gangs
here and we have African-American gangs. I don't know whether the first
generation of immigrants coming to D.C. consists to a large extent of
people from Central America. That first generation is going to be one
thing, and then their children may begin to develop some of the same
kinds of problems that have plagued African-Americans and some of the
Latinos who have been here for a while. You may see that in the future.
It's certainly something that would be interesting to keep an eye on. 

Community policing and the decline in crime 

I think that, in the short term, we will continue to see some decline in
crime. Maybe we won't see double-digit decreases, but we are likely to
see some further decline. I don't think we've really "hit bottom" yet. But I
also think that until we decide to deal with some of the more systemic
problems in our society and really repair the educational system and things
like that, we're going to be looking into crystal balls trying to guess at
this. We already know what the ingredients for crime are, and yet we're
not doing a whole lot in response. In fact, I think this decline in the crime
rate has given us a false sense of security that somehow we've had some
kind of major breakthrough, and we haven't. We've just been lucky. 

I think that if community policing had not come along when it did, it
probably would have fallen flat on its face. We were fortunate enough that
it came at a time when crime rates were falling. The reality is that police
chiefs live in a pressure cooker. I'm here to tell you that if you're talking
about establishing community policing and your mayor is saying there's a
rise in homicides, you will know very quickly who's going to win that
argument--it won't be community policing. So, again, in the timing of
community policing, we were very, very fortunate. 

But what community policing did was make us start thinking about crime
differently. It started making individuals take some responsibility for
dealing with crime. If we stay on that track and really start to work on
some of the profound social issues that are causing the dichotomy of
have's and have-not's to be here to begin with, I think it will have a
long-term impact on crime. 

-------------------------------

For more information on the National Institute of Justice, please contact:

National Criminal Justice Reference Service
P.O. Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20849-6000
800-851-3420
e-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org

To access the World Wide Web site, go to
http://www.ncjrs.org

If you have any questions, call or e-mail NCJRS.

-------------------------------

About the National Institute of Justice

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a component of the Office of
Justice Programs, is the research agency of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Created by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as
amended, NIJ is authorized to support research, evaluation, and
demonstration programs, development of technology, and both national
and international information dissemination. Specific mandates of the Act
direct NIJ to: 

--Sponsor special projects and research and development programs that
will improve and strengthen the criminal justice system and reduce or
prevent crime.

--Conduct national demonstration projects that employ innovative or
promising approaches for improving criminal justice.

--Develop new technologies to fight crime and improve criminal justice.

--Evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice programs and identify
programs that promise to be successful if continued or repeated.

--Recommend actions that can be taken by Federal, State, and local
governments as well as by private organizations to improve criminal
justice. 

--Carry out research on criminal behavior.

--Develop new methods of crime prevention and reduction of crime and
delinquency. 

In recent years, NIJ has greatly expanded its initiatives, the result of the
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (the Crime
Act), partnerships with other Federal agencies and private foundations,
advances in technology, and a new international focus. Some examples of
these new initiatives: 

--Exploring key issues in community policing, violence against women,
violence within the family, sentencing reforms, and specialized courts
such as drug courts.

--Developing dual-use technologies to support national defense and local
law enforcement needs.

--Establishing four regional National Law Enforcement and Corrections
Technology Centers and a Border Research and Technology Center. 

--Strengthening NIJ's links with the international community through
participation in the United Nations network of criminological institutes,
the U.N. Criminal Justice Information Network, UNOJUST (United
Nations Online Justice Clearinghouse), and the NIJ International Center.

--Improving the online capability of NIJ's criminal justice information
clearinghouse. 

--Establishing the ADAM (Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring)
program--formerly the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program--to increase
the number of drug-testing sites and study drug-related crime.

The Institute Director establishes the Institute's objectives, guided by the
priorities of the Office of Justice Programs, the Department of Justice, and
the needs of the criminal justice field. The Institute actively solicits the
views of criminal justice professionals and researchers in the continuing
search for answers that inform public policymaking in crime and justice. 

To find out more information about the National Institute of Justice, please
contact:

National Criminal Justice Reference Service 
P.O. Box 6000 
Rockville, MD 20849-6000 
800-851-3420
e-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org

To obtain an electronic version of this document, access the NIJ Web site 
(http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij).

If you have questions, call or e-mail NCJRS.

-------------------------------

NCJ 178260