Crack Cocaine Users

'This book will have undoubted appeal to any individual employed within frontline services that have drug alcohol remits. It will be of particular value to those who are not personally familiar with crack scenes but may encounter crack users within their line of work. It will also be a useful text for any harm reduction agency throughout the UK due to the first-hand accounts of drug using practices described by Briggs. From a more academic perspective, the text has a definite multi-disciplinary appeal, and students of qualitative research (at any stage of their studies) will benefit from the ethnographic accounts.' 'Briggs observations and accounts of the drug using environments in which he became immersed is a masterful presentation of contemporary ethnography.'-Stephen Parkin, University of Huddersfield in Sociology of Health & Illness, 2012, p.807-808 'Dan Briggss Crack Cocaine Users draws upon data taken from a year-long ethnographic study investigating the crack scene in one south-London borough, and, in analysing the often painful realities of everyday life for this marginalized group, makes an important contribution to the rejuvenation of serious, forward-looking empirical criminology.' '[Briggs'] analysis of the practical, esoteric and subjective impediments that often prevent or discourage access to recovery and desistance should be particularly useful to practitioners and policy specialists. He offers a careful but important critique of current government policy aimed at reducing the harms of the street level crack trade both for users and the surrounding community.' 'Crack Cocaine Users is, then, an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the lives of the marginalized in contemporary Western liberal democracies. The central tale Briggs has to tell is compelling, and this book should find its way onto the desks of critical, cultural and policy-orientated criminologists, and the reading lists of undergraduate students across the social sciences.'-Simon Winlow, University of York in the British Journal of Criminology, June 2012 '...Daniel Briggs has provided detailed insight into another population commonly misunderstood, unreasonably homogenised as a group and a substance unreasonably attributed with powers to addict and with the ability to retain that addiction that is located almost solely within the substance itself crack cocaine.' 'There is a great deal of detail in Briggs book both author led and given through the voices of those researched but there is also an admirable attempt to locate these lives within contemporary social theory, an attempt that to a large degree is successful. Overall this is a book that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone that is either already engaged with crack using populations, who is likely to become so or just anyone interested in good ethnographic research and what it is capable of or issues of addiction and crack cocaine use.'-Ross Coomber, Plymouth University, in Addiction (forthcoming in 2013) 'This ethnographic study will both shock and sober the reader. In a gripping text with an anecdotal style, Briggs gives a detailed insight into the lifestyles of crack cocaine users, a description of the evolution of crack cocaine careers and the socio-structure of drug-using practices.' 'From the practitioners perspective Briggs research is valuable because it is an analytical account of crack cocaine use that develops the readers understanding of the drug users self-perceptions of shame and guilt.'-Kathryn Thompson, Probation Officer, Greater Manchester Trust, in Probation Journal vol 59 no 4 'A sociologist by trade and an ethnographer by training, Briggs approaches this project with an expert analysis of the macro system joined by a compelling curiosity about lived realities within the micro-level.' 'Research within the soci

Daniel Briggs is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of East London. He works with a range of social groups from the most vulnerable to the most dangerous to the most misunderstood. His work takes him inside prisons, crack houses, mental health institutions, asylum seeker institutions, hostels, care homes and hospices, and homeless services. His research interests include social exclusion, culture and deviance, and late modern identities. He has recently undertaken work in Spain on gypsies and youth risk behaviours while on holiday and is currently undertaking research on youth gangs.

1. Introduction 2. How Did it Get to This? 3. Rivertown: The Research Context 4. Becoming a Crack Cocaine User 5. The Social Organisation of the Crack Scene 6. Crack Use and Social Control 7. The Management of Self and Others 8. Ways Out or Ways Down? 9. Discussion and Conclusion 10. Epilogue: The Field Lives On