When we think about young people dealing drugs, we tend to picture it happening on urban streets, in disadvantaged, crime-ridden neighborhoods. But drugs are used everywhere – even in upscale suburbs and top-tier high schools – and teenage users in the suburbs tend to buy drugs from their peers, dealers who have their own culture and code, distinct from their urban counterparts.
In "Code of the Suburb", Scott Jacques and Richard Wright offer a fascinating ethnography of the culture of suburban drug dealers. Drawing on fieldwork among teens in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta, they carefully parse the complicated code that governs relationships among buyers, sellers, police, and other suburbanites. That code differs from the one followed by urban drug dealers in one crucial respect: whereas urban drug dealers see violent vengeance as crucial to status and security, the opposite is true for their suburban counterparts. As Jacques and Wright show, suburban drug dealers accord status to deliberate avoidance of conflict, which helps keep their drug markets more peaceful – and, consequently, less likely to be noticed by law enforcement.
Offering new insight into both the little-studied area of suburban drug dealing, and, by extension, the more familiar urban variety, "Code of the Suburb" will be of interest to scholars and policy makers alike.
About the Author
Scott Jacques is assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
Richard Wright is professor of criminal justice and criminology in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
Reviews
"'Code of the Suburb' takes us into the world of young white suburban drug dealing and in doing so, provides a fascinating and powerful counterpoint to the devastation of the drug war in poor, minority communities. To readers familiar with that context, the absence of police and prisons – indeed, of virtually any negative consequences for selling and using drugs – is quite striking" – Alice Goffman, author of "On the Run"
"Long interested in the exotic 'other', criminologists typically focus on trying to understand urban crime problems and neglect those occurring in boring, white suburbs. Yet, with its manicured lawns and American flags flying, suburbia is so obviously artificial that it surely is masking something worthy of the criminologist's gaze. In this fascinating book, Jacques and Wright get behind the picket fences and gated communities and help us understand suburbia in an entirely new light. It is sure to become a classic in 'suburban studies'" – Shadd Maruna, Dean and Professor, Rutgers School of Criminal Justice
"With the advent of self-report surveys in the 1940s and 1950s, social scientists learned that delinquent activity was fairly common among white, middle class, suburban youth. However, not much was ever made of the finding for our understanding of suburban life. In 'Code of the Suburb', Jacques and Wright explore drug dealing in a middle class suburb and in doing so shift our conceptual lens away from popular images captured in The Wire. Drawing on a series of rich qualitative interviews with thirty young suburban drug dealers, Jacques and Wright uncover surprising similarities between white, suburban, middle class dealers and their black, urban, lower class counterparts. But differences between the two groups are stark, especially regarding victimization, use of violence, and encounters with legal authorities such as the police. For social scientists studying race, class, and drug dealing, I strongly urge you to include this book on your must read list" – John H. Laub, University of Maryland, former director, National Institute of Justice
"If you think adolescent drug dealing invariably leads to trouble with the law, you should read this book. If you think drug dealing promotes violence, you should read this book. If you think drug dealing is for antisocial 'losers', read this book. You will learn that selling drugs in suburbia confers social status, rarely involves legal risk or violence, and need not disrupt conventional academic and career paths. In a word, you will learn why so many American middle-class kids think drug selling is cool" – Richard Rosenfeld, Founders Professor of Crimonology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis
