Pubdate: Mon, 14 May 2012
Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN)
Copyright: 2012 The StarPhoenix
Contact: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400
Author: Jordon Cooper

DRUG CRIME REALLY DOESN'T PAY

The Saskatoon Integrated Drug Unit, involving city police and the 
RCMP, executed two search warrants in Mayfair on May 2 stemming from 
an investigation of a dial-a-dope operation, and arrested six men 
from Toronto and seized seven ounces of cocaine and crack, along with 
$20,000 in cash.

My first thought when I read about the arrests was, how do drug 
dealers think their career choices are going to play out?

According to the book, Freakonomics, by Stephen Dubner and Steven 
Levitt, it's a tough life being a drug dealer. Research by 
sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, who spent four years observing one of 
Chicago's toughest drug gangs, shows that drug dealing is violent and 
low paying, with a one-in-four chance of getting killed.

Having spent some time in Chicago's gang-controlled neighbourhoods I 
know there is nothing comparable in Saskatoon, but even when you take 
the gun violence out of the equation, it's a horrible way to make a living.

The pay is bad at the base of the drug pyramid. Drug dealing suffers 
from the same market forces that anyone in retail experiences. If 
your margins are too high, someone will undercut you, which lowers profits.

While the accompanying photo the Saskatoon police sent out with the 
drug bust showed $20,000 in cash, that money has to be split multiple ways.

According to Venkatesh's research, drug dealers made about $3.30 an 
hour working the corner. This means the drug dealers at the bottom of 
the pyramid are much better off financially if they were to work at a 
minimum wage job. On top of the paltry wages, dealers were each 
arrested about six times over four years and suffered more than two 
serious injuries during that time. Those are the ones who didn't get killed.

So why do people do it? Conventional wisdom is the dealers don't 
think they will get caught. While my experience is nothing like 
Venkatesh's immersion into a criminal gang, the drug dealers to whom 
I have spoken often repeated the mantra: "If you do the crime, you 
have to do the time." As weird as it is, jail time is often factored 
into their risk assessment equation in the same way the rest of us 
expect to pay for repairs when buying a used car: It's something to be endured.

A better explanation is found in Ruby Payne's book, A Framework for 
Understanding Poverty. In it she describes a transcript from court 
where an impoverished family was discussing a case of sexual 
molestation in the same way we would discuss going to the park or a 
family gathering.

The details are disturbing, but what you are left with is a 
discussion of criminal behaviour being so much of the part of the 
family life that it's considered normal and expected. Even if it 
isn't encouraged directly, jail is seen as a normal part of life, 
which of course removes any notion of prison being a deterrent.

Payne says the solution is found through the school system. While 
education is an important part of the solution, she sees educators 
and staff playing an important and often overlooked as role models 
for children to learn a different set of norms and values that 
challenge what the kids see at home.

Part of the solution is to find a way to keep teachers and students 
together longer in the schools that are experiencing 
multi-dimensional social issues.

She suggests that children need two years with the same teacher to 
build the kind of relationship that helps them understand there is 
another way to live, and see that another value system exists.

The same could be said of front-line workers in service agencies. It 
takes time to build relationships that are strong enough to change 
lives, yet often these are the positions that have the highest 
organizational turnover.

The problem with Payne's theory is that even if you could build a 
system around two- and three-year teaching cycles, the children's 
families may not be that stable. I have talked to many Saskatoon 
teachers who speak of really high turnover rates among children in 
their classes, which undermine the best efforts of many teachers to 
make a difference.

I used to think that no one grew up thinking they wanted to work a 
corner and go to jail. Sadly, there are many who do just that because 
that's all they know.

Investing in troubled families to stabilize them costs a lot up front 
but nothing compared to what it does if the cycle continues. When you 
look at having to pay $260 a day to keep someone in prison, it puts 
into context the cost of doing nothing to help families.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom