The Subculture of Drugs and Crime Female Drug Offenders

Female Drug Offenders and the Subculture of Drugs and Crime

About the Reading, the Author and her Expertise

My reading is about female drug offenders and the drug and crime subculture, specifically gender, stigma, and social control. It has been obtained from the book “Rethinking Gender, Crime, and Justice.” The author of the book is Susan E. Martin, specializing in clinical social work and a therapist based in Los Angeles, CA. the author’s specialties are mood disorders, relationship issues, and anxiety. She works with individuals in transition to help them unlock their potential and uncover the best path for them.

The Main Issue in the Reading

The main issue in the reading is gender, stigma, and social control. Female drug offenders face greater stigma compared to male drug users. They are mostly labeled as failures both as mothers and as women in general. Moreover, they face more social controls concerning their behavior than formal and informal control mechanisms. This stereotype distorts the present and the past female drug use, particularly women of color (Renzetti, Goodstein & Miller, 2006).

It also stigmatizes both the child exposed to drugs like cocaine while in the uterus and the mother. However, the stereotype mostly ignores the cultural and structural factors that contribute to and shape the nature of female drug use and other criminal activities. Presently, women have a higher probability of receiving medication for stress, weight control, and depression than men, contributing largely to women becoming addicted (Renzetti, Goodstein & Miller, 2006).

The Key Terms Necessary to Understand the Reading

The term “female drug offenders” refers to a group of women and girls within the user population involved with criminal sale and use of illegal drugs and other criminal activities. Another term is drug use, which primarily refers to illegal substance use such as cocaine, marijuana, polydrug, and heroine. A drug economy is an underground market that supplies users with the mentioned substances to sustain their demand since it is illegal to possess or sell them. This economy supports a social world or subculture within which addicts, heavy users, and other professional drug-using criminals participate. This is called the drug and crime subculture (Renzetti, Goodstein & Miller, 2006).

Importance of Discussing this Issue in a Class

This issue is critical and as such, creating awareness is necessary. It is significant to understand the underlying problems or the route of the issue. Cultural stereotypes rest on and emerge from socially structured inequalities. An emphasis on sentencing suggests that drug addiction problems result from guilty people who want to distract their attention from the structural problems of social services and education cutbacks, crumbling communities, and poverty, coupled with sexism and racism.

Many women are currently involved in dealing and are confined to limited work or independent selling at the lowest level. They are also viewed as unreliable and emotional and have become vulnerable to victimization by other dealers and clients. Consequently, most of them rely on a shift of mixture, including property crime and prostitution, as they endure other forms of victimization in their survival on the streets (Renzetti, Goodstein & Miller, 2006). Therefore, there is a need for structural social changes.

Who is affected by the issue?

This issue does not just affect the drug offenders. Their lifestyle is accompanied by high social costs to the women drug users, their children, and society in general. Prisons and jails are increasingly becoming filled with female drug abusers, primarily women of color (Renzetti, Goodstein & Miller, 2006). The pressure is left on the economy to cater for their high imprisonment cost and the psychosocial effects on their children, and the possibility that without intervention procedures, they will go back to drugs once they are released. Hence, it is a societal problem.