'No One Learned': Interpreting a Drugs Crackdown Operation and its Consequences Through The 'Lens' of Social Harm. (9th July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mason, Will
• Is Part Of: British journal of criminology. Volume 60:Number 2(2020)
• Page Start: 382
• Page End: 402
• Publication Date: 2019-07-09
• Subjects: social harm -- undercover -- crackdown -- policing -- race; Criminology -- Periodicals; Crime -- Periodicals; Criminal justice, Administration of -- Periodicals; 364.05
• DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azz047
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0007-0955

Abstract

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.