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Caught in the Con-Game: The Young, White Drug User's Contact with the Legal System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Clinton R. Sanders
Clinton R. Sanders*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Temple University
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Extract

This paper examines a controversial area of legal activity—the enforcement of drug laws. It focuses on the experiences of the young, white drug user for whom arrest and processing for drug law violations commonly represent the first serious involvement with the legal system.

It is within the interactions and institutional experience of legal processing that the young drug user alters, reconstructs or solidifies a meaning structure which defines and justifies his behavior (Blumer, 1969). This shaping of definitions and perceptions takes place primarily within a particular institutional setting—narcotics court. The purpose of the court (as it is perceived by the regular actors within the court setting) is to publicly identify the "deviant" thereby setting an example for potential or undetected lawbreakers and to punish the perpetrators of deviance in order to deter them from engaging in further deviant activity (cf., Schwartz and Skolnick, 1962:133).

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 9 , Issue 2: Litigation and Dispute Processing: Part II , Winter 1975 , pp. 197 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 The Law and Society Association

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