Journeys into Drugs and Crime: Jamaican Men Involved in the UK Drugs Trade

Close in content and structure to the original PhD thesis completed at the University of Sheffield, this book contributes to our understanding of the background, trajectory, and experience in the dual worlds of crime and prison of Jamaican origin drug dealers locked up in British prisons. The scene is set over the first 80 or so pages, with chapters on the Jamaican and UK contexts, reviews of the literature on drug supply, and accounts of the migration experience. It is from Chapter 5 onwards that the author comes to the gritty heart of the matter, taking us into the drug dealing life world of her informants, their experience of violence used both instrumentally and casually, of the contrasting policing styles in Jamaica and in the UK, and of prison seen respectively through Jamaican and Black British eyes.

While much of it is familiar, the material contains extensive excerpts from recorded interviews with her eight informants that resonate with the authenticity of lived experience and the deep insight of people with time for self-reflection. It is a story worth retelling, both in order to, pace Phillippe Bourgois, humanise marginal populations and draw out the ambiguities of people’s situations in the realities of the illicit drug markets. Even with the most harrowing experience of violence, the distinction between victim and perpetrator is so unclear in cultures with deep histories of injustice and living outside the law. As entrenched as criminal behaviour may be, it rarely seems to deserve the label “organised”. There appear to be loose associations rather than firm structures, which raises questions about the assumptions behind the sentencing tariffs.

Based on prison interviews, the book sits between or across different genres, but cannot be classified either as a biography, life story or oral history, or an ethnography. One of the difficulties with the interview-based approach, without the confirmation from third parties or routine observations in ordinary settings, is checking on the veracity of the accounts. It may not matter for our understanding of the social or cultural background of the cohort, but the accounts of criminal organisation have been carefully edited by the informants, be it for self-protection, from instinct or in adherence to time honoured prison code. Even so, they provide a rare and honest insight into the experience of men of a Jamaican and black British background caught on the wrong side of the drugs trade.