Social Organization and Drug Law Enforcement

Rebecca Blank and Tracey L. Meares

JCPR Working Papers from Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research

Abstract: This piece introduces "social organization theory" to the analysis of drug-law enforcement policy. Social organization theory was developed more than 50 years ago as an innovative attempt to explain criminal behavior. This theory should have revolutionized criminal law policy. Unfortunately, it did not. In this piece, I demonstrate how social organization theory has great potential to address problems associated with both drugs and drug-law enforcement in poor, urban communities, and it suggests a new direction for drug-law enforcement policy. Specifically, social organization theory suggests that we move away from our stubborn adherence to individualistic strategies that concentrate on prevalent and long sentences for drug offenders to a community-level approach that focuses on law-abiders instead of law-breakers. Although our current individualistic policies have the potential to benefit citizens of impoverished neighborhoods, social organization theory provides a compelling framework to help identify precisely the ways in which the current policies confound their own ends by destroying community fabric instead of reinforcing it. Prominent among the many reasons that the current policy is likely to undermine community social organization is the fact that the policy disproportionately affects African Americans as a group and poor African Americans who are spatially concentrated in urban areas in particular. This distributional asymmetry is likely to lead to less compliance with the law among African Americans, less effective policing of African-American neighborhoods, less participation by community residents in formal organizations, and weaker friendship networks among neighbors-all preconditions to erosion of social organization. To rectify the pitfalls created by the current regime, I suggest that drug-law enforcement policies be constructed in accordance with the teachings of social organization theory, and I point to two examples of policies that address problems related to drugs by improving community social organization. Critical to my discussion of useful policies is the fact that the racial dynamics of the distribution of punishment must be considered in order to avoid group stigmatization that confounds the potential for individuals to form networks that prevent harm associated with both drugs and drug law enforcement.

Date: 1997-08-01
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