Taxing Times: Inter-Criminal Victimization And Drug Robbery Amongst The English Professional Criminal Milieu

ABSTRACT

This article considers the oft-hidden instances of inter-criminal victimization in illegal drug markets amongst serious criminals in the North of England. Focusing on proto-criminal activity known in regional argot as ‘taxing’ (drug dealers robbing one another) it draws on ethnographic material and suggests that contrast to the literature on the subject from the USA ‘taxing’ in England rarely leads to cycles of retaliatory violence. Yet against a more general climate of precariousness in disadvantaged communities in England, ‘taxing’ as a deviant behavior is a gainful, relatively low-risk activity for a minority of established, professional violent criminals.

Notes

¹ We are aware of the way that the term taxing has different uses, and that, for example, the term taxing can also be employed also used by recreational user/dealers and social suppliers to describe the charge levied on supplying friends and acquaintances with recreational drugs.

² ‘Shotty’ in this context is slang for a sawn-off shotgun, a longstanding firearm of choice and convenience for many English criminals when committing robberies, given that tight firearms controls mean there is much less availability of handguns in the UK, a point to which other interviewees attest elsewhere.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Treadwell

JAMES TREADWELL is Professor of Criminology at Staffordshire University, he undertook a long term ethnographic study of the English Defence League publishing material from that project (with Simon Winlow and Steve Hall) in ‘Rise of the Right’ (Policy, Winlow, Hall, and Treadwell 2017). Prior to that, he used ethnographic methods to study the August 2011 English Riots and material generated from that project featured in ‘Riots and Political Protest’ (Routledge Hall and Winlow 2015). His research interests include, Violent, Professional Crime and Organised Crime, Prison and Imprisonment (Prison Violence and Victimisation) and Drug use and Crime.

Craig Ancrum

CRAIG ANCRUM is a Senior lecturer in Criminology at Teesside University in the UK. His research interests are around drugs and drug markets, violence, consumerism and the use of ethnographic research methods. Craig has been involved in ongoing research into drugs and crime in his native city of Newcastle for a number of years.

Craig Kelly

CRAIG KELLY is a visiting lecturer in Criminology at the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University. He received his undergraduate degree in Criminology and Sociology from Sheffield Hallam University in 2013 before working within substance misuse services in the midlands. Following this he completed his MA in Criminology at Birmingham City University. His research interests include illicit economies, organised crime and violence.