‘No One Learned’: Interpreting a Drugs Crackdown Operation and its Consequences Through The ‘Lens’ of Social Harm

Will Mason

The British Journal of Criminology, 2020, vol. 60, issue 2, 382-402

Abstract: This article seeks to extend studies of social harm by detailing the ways that harm is interpreted, identified and reflected upon by social actors in a specific empirical context: a drugs crackdown operation in a northern English city. Using a longitudinal ethnographic approach, unique insights are reported both from the time that the operation took place and a point in time five years afterwards. The data offer rich accounts of the immediate, short- and longer-term impacts as interpreted by youth workers and a group of mostly Somali young people (aged 13–19). Social harm, it is argued, offers a useful ‘lens’ through which to critically explore the culpability of well-meaning state interventions in the (re)production of structural inequalities.

Keywords: social harm; undercover; crackdown; policing; race (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azz047 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:crimin:v:60:y:2020:i:2:p:382-402.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The British Journal of Criminology is currently edited by Eamonn Carrabine

More articles in The British Journal of Criminology from Centre for Crime and Justice Studies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().