Criminal Underworld Research Articles

Drug Abuse Prevention Campaigns in Chile (2004-2014): Between Prohibitionism and Stigmatisation

This paper studies the presence and reproduction of the ‘prohibitionist’ paradigm in the Chilean state’s drug policy by studying its drug abuse prevention campaigns. By means of a content analysis of the television spots broadcast between 2004 and 2014, the discursive and ideological elements present in these campaigns were examined. First and foremost, the results show that, despite institutional change and the creation of bodies such as the National Service for the Prevention and Rehabilitation of Drug and Alcohol Use (SENDA) and the National Council for Narcotics Control (CONACE), the state’s discourse has remained focused on the prohibitionist paradigm, resorting to highly stereotyped emotional messages. Secondly, drug consumption has been stigmatised and framed in profoundly dramatic contexts in which users belong to the criminal underworld or have physical and/or cognitive impairments. Thirdly, notwithstanding the fact that there are certain differences between the communication approaches employed by the SENDA and the CONACE, the discourses of both institutions are very uniform and reductionist. In order to design more efficient media campaigns, target audiences should be encouraged to analyse and ponder reflectively on the issue by conveying rational messages that contrast facts and data and offer a positive vision stressing the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

The New Federal Attack on the Loan Shark Problem

At time when presidential candidate makes an attack on loan sharking such significant part of his campaign that it is highlighted in his acceptance speech and rebroadcast as part of one-minute spot political announcements, the timeliness of this subject is apparent.' This high-level attention illustrates growing public awareness of the very serious nature of the loan shark problem. In recent years number of investigations of loan sharking have been undertaken by governmental agencies and other entities. Their conclusions are striking. Loan sharking has been characterized as a serious threat, not only to the unfortunate borrowers but also to the entire economic community and as of the principal and most lucrative operations of the criminal underworld.2 The seriousness of the problem is accentuated because loan sharking has close connections with other activities of organized crime, including bookmaking and narcotics distribution.3 Pushers loan money to addicts to finance drug purchases.4 Money lenders frequent gambling establishments to offer services to overenthusiastic patrons who want one more chance.5 In this setting the Congress of the United States chose in 1968 to make what it termed extortionate credit transactions federal crime and did so as Title II of

A Note on Dacoits in India

During the years of independence India saw the development of a modern criminal underworld in the large cities. The country has its Chicago-style gangsters, ruffians and teddy boys who kill, rob and intimidate in the same manner as their opposite numbers in the West do. However, the largest section of India's criminal activities is still committed by the most traditional and the most romantic type of criminals, the age-old terrors of the countryside, the dacoits.

Delinquency Treatment in the Controlled Activity Group

A FUNDAMENTAL problem of social control in a complex society is the maintenance of social ties to those personalities who breach the conventions. In simpler societies the great strength of primary relationships serves to prevent serious breach, or where serious breach has occurred, of drastic severance of social ties. But in industrial societies, breach of convention as defined especially in the criminal law leads to the application of sanctions which weaken the ties to family, kin and community. By a widening of social distance accomplished by the withdrawal of social contact and sympathy the recidivist offender is as effectively separated from his society as though he were physically exiled. Repeated application of punishment extends the separation into a cleavage from which finally emerges a segregate culture-group, the criminal underworld, equipped with its variant philosophy and culture values, its occupational techniques, and its social roles. Paradoxically, it is only through success in this half-world that the criminal personality can achieve a role in organized crime or in crime-politics. The control of organized crime, criminal syndicates and racketeering, then, involves the elimination of the social process which creates the backbone of organized crimethe criminal personality. This paper proposes to deal with the genetic aspect of this problem, namely the process of differential association. The earliest genetic phases of the segregation process in the history of the individual delinquent have been described by psychiatrists and sociologists. They have emphasized severally the motivations and the social processes involved. William Healy, studying the motivations of youthful delinquents as

Chicago's Criminal Underworld of the '80'S and '90'S: II

Chicago's Criminal Underworld of the '80'S and '90'S: II

The Criminal Underworld of Chicago in the '80's and '90's

The Criminal Underworld of Chicago in the '80's and '90's