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35 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 191 (1997-1998)
Social Organization and Drug Law Enforcement

handle is hein.journals/amcrimlr35 and id is 201 raw text is: SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND DRUG LAW ENFORCEMENT Tracey L. Meares* I. INTRODUCTION ....................................... 191 II. COMMUNITY SOCIAL ORGANIZATION THEORY AND THE CURRENT DRUG-LAW ENFORCEMENT REGIME ........................ 194 A. A Theory of Community Social Organization .............. 194 B. Tough Sentences and Social Organization Improvement? ...... 198 C. Tough Sentences and Social Organization Disruption? ....... 205 D. Stigma, Linked Fate, and Multiple Roles: The Current Drug-Law Enforcement Regime and Social Disorganization ... 211 III. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND A NEW DIRECTION FOR DRUG-LAW ENFORCEMENT POLICY .................................. 217 A. Reverse Stings .................................... 220 B. Loitering Ordinances ............................... 223 IV. CONCLUSION ......................................... 226 I. INTRODUCTION Over half of a century ago, two Chicago School researchers, Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay, argued in a seminal work that the structure of communities matters more to explaining the occurrence of delinquency than do individual characteris- tics of offenders. According to Shaw and McKay's social organization theory, individual factors often correlated with crime-such as low economic status or unemployment-do not themselves significantly impact crime. Rather, community- level structures, such as friendship networks, participation in formal organizations like PTAs and churches, and supervision of neighborhood teen peer groups, mediate the impact of these factors on crime. Put another way, the structure of the community in which an individual lives interacts in important ways to either facilitate or retard that individual's criminal or delinquent behavior. In recognizing the critical role of a community comprised primarily of law abiders in controlling crime and delinquency, Shaw and McKay concluded that [i]ndividualized meth- ods of treatment probably will not be successful in a sufficiently large number of cases to result in any substantial diminution of the volume of delinquency and * Assistant Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. The Russell Baker Scholars Fund provided financial support. I am grateful to Al Alschuler, Mary Becker, Emily Buss, Richard Craswell, Beth Garrett, Jack Goldsmith, Dan Kahan, Martha Nussbaum, Stephen Schulhofer, David Wilkins, the Chicago Feminist Law Professors and Friends, and participants in faculty workshops at the University of Chicago, Stanford, and the University of Virginia Law Schools for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Joshua Yount and Michael Buckner provided excellent research assistance.

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