The Logic of Violence by Brendan Marsh

Author:Brendan Marsh [Marsh, Brendan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138388864
Google: E_VCuQEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-09-18T03:56:04+00:00

Rips and extortion

Some drug-addicted individuals source drugs on credit with little intention of paying regardless of consequence. Driven by desire for instant gratification and unrestrained hedonism, Larry consciously and deliberately ripped off dealers. When the consequences come knocking at his door he was compelled by survival instinct to engage in ever increasing acts of desperation to raise the required money. Larry explained that:

Just before I got clean I was using a lot of cocaine and I got mixed up with these people I was buying the cocaine off. I ripped them one night, I just took the drugs and I didn’t pay them back. One night a while later I was dragged into a van and I was threatened with guns and I was given a few slaps and digs and my family was threatened as well. I actually feared for my life because I thought I’d be murdered, there was a lot of murders around the area. The threats against my family were they’d fuck a grenade into my home, I got really alarmed when my family were involved. (Larry)

Jason had been protected from many dangerous situations by the knowledge of his family’s reputation for involvement in serious crime. White (1996: 91) states that ‘an addict divides people into either objects to be exploited or people to be avoided’. Jason certainly exploited his ‘back-up’ for his own selfish reasons, however he described an occasion where he miscalculated the power of the individuals from whom he was stealing and found himself in considerable danger. Jason stated that:

I set up a rip one night on a bloke who wanted a kilo of gear. It turned out he was the cousin of a gangster. Next thing three blokes turn up at my house and take me away, they kept me in a gaf [house] for 3 whole days and kicked the bejesus out of me. They rang my da and told him they had me and they were gonna kill me and then burn down his house. My da got half the money that day so they let me go. I got them the rest a few days later. I ended up selling drugs for those lads and got to know them well. (Jason)

Drug dealers, particularly those for whom the addicted constitute their primary customers, understand clearly that ‘value can be destructively extracted from the human body … by interpersonal and instrumental criminal violence’ (Karandinos et al., 2015: 45). Indeed, the profit-oriented drug dealer demands ‘disciplined responses from individuals whose very identities are inspired by disorder’ (Hobbs, 1995a: 118) by using the force of his violent reputation to manage personnel and enforce demands. The personal characteristics of drug-addicted sellers make the ruthless system of debt collection necessary; managing unmanageable people takes extraordinary measures. Product is sourced on credit at an agreed price and must be repaid on an agreed schedule. Collected debts are then used to pay off suppliers or source large quantities of drugs for distribution. It is clear, then, that

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