The Necessary Conditions for Retaliation: Toward a Theory of Non‐Violent and Violent Forms in Drug Markets

Abstract

Research provides strong support for the theory that drug market participants are often involved in violent retaliation because they lack access to formal mediation. Yet retaliation is not always violent. The existing drug market literature offers few counts, estimates, or stories of non‐violent retaliation, and no single theory specifies the variable conditions that determine which form of retaliation occurs. This paper contributes to criminology by drawing on the necessary conditions perspective and qualitative data obtained from drug dealers to provide the conceptual and theoretical foundation for future criminological work, including the development of theories that explain variability in retaliatory forms, research that demonstrates whether any given theory is supported by data, and criminal justice policies that draw on theoretical and empirical knowledge to reduce all forms of drug market retaliation—violent and non‐violent.

Keywords:

• drug market
• retaliation
• violence
• fraud
• stealth

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Richard Wright, Richard Rosenfeld, Janet Lauritsen, Richard Tewksbury, and the anonymous reviewers at Justice Quarterly for their valuable insights and suggestions. The work on which this paper is based was supported in part by a Research Grant Award from the National Science Foundation, Division of Social and Economic Sciences, Law and Social Sciences Program (NSF ID #: 0819090), and by a Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

Notes

1. In addition to retaliation, other forms of social control include settlement, negotiation, avoidance, and toleration (Black, 1998; Horwitz, 1990; for examples in the drug market, see Jacques & Wright, 2008a; Reuter, 1983; Taylor, 2007).

2. The four forms of retaliation identified by Jacques and Wright (2008) are of relevance to criminology not only because they emerge from illicit drug market conflicts, but also because in many cases those actions are defined and treated as criminal actions by the government. Even when a person is a criminal, it is illegal to retaliate against that person with stealth, fraud, or violence. “To be sure, not all rights are given up simply because individuals are transacting off the books. Homicides [, for example,] are still investigated and prosecuted, even if they occur in the context of an illegal exchange” (Venkatesh, 2006, p. 175). “Although informal agreements about the specifics (e.g., weight, quality, price) of a drug exchange cannot be enforced by civil or criminal law, robberies, burglaries, and assaults are illegal regardless of whether the victim is a drug [market participant] or a law‐abiding citizen” (Jacques & Wright, 2008, p. 236).

3. Jacques and Wright (2008a, pp. 238–239) label violent retaliation involving resource confiscation “retaliatory robbery,” but this paper labels such acts “violent confiscation” because kidnappings also involve violence and resource transfer (e.g., Pearson & Hobbs, 2001). Thus, “retaliatory robbery” is not a sufficiently broad term to adequately describe this form of retaliation.