When I lived in Oakland, the big crack dealer with many employees was Felix Mitchell. At his trial, he laid how how he had applied modern corporate management principles (don't remember if he mentioned TQM or Tom Peters though!), division of labor, and was just following the American Dream. Plus, he had given away tons of $ to families on the verge of eviction, and paid kids in jr. high really good $ to be look-outs for the poh-leese.
He was convicted, natch, and was killed in prison. Funeral was attended
by thousands. As many as attended the funeral of Huey Newton, killed by a
drug dealer, from the Black Guerilla Family prison gang, tired of giving
credit to Huey, based on his heroics in the BPP.
http://www.oaklandnet.com/parks/news/011303a.asp
http://www.prospect.org/print/V5/17/skolnick-j.html
> ...Domestically, get-tough intuitions have inspired us to threaten drug
> kingpins with long prison terms or death. Partly, we wish to punish and
> incapacitate them, but mostly we wish to deter others from following in
> their felonious paths. Unfortunately, such policies are undermined by the
> "Felix Mitchell Dilemma," which I named in honor of the West Coast's once
> notorious kingpin, who received a life sentence in the 1980s, albeit a
> short one since he was murdered in federal prison. Mitchell's sentence
> and early demise did not deter drug sellers in the Bay Area. On the
> contrary, drug sales continued and, with Mitchell's monopolistic pricing
> eliminated, competition reduced the price of crack. The main effect of
> Mitchell's imprisonment was to destabilize the market, lower drug prices,
> and increase violence as rival gang members challenged each other for
> market share. Drug-related drive-by shootings, street homicides, and
> felonious assaults increased.
Recently, two of Mitchell's successors, Timothy Bluitt and Marvin Johnson, were arrested and sent to prison. So will peace finally come to the streets? "When a guy like Bluitt goes down, someone takes his place and gets an even bigger slice of the pie," an anonymous federal agent told the San Francisco Chronicle this past January. "The whole process is about consolidating turf and power."
Youngsters who sell drugs in Oakland, Denver, Detroit, South Central Los Angeles, Atlanta, and New York are part of generations who have learned to see crime as economic opportunity. This does not excuse their behavior, but it does intensify our need to break the cycle of poverty, abuse, and violence that dominates their lives. Prisons do not deter criminals partly because the Mitchells and Bluitts do not rationally calculate choices with the same points of reference that legislators employ. Drug dealers already face the death penalty on the streets.
History reminds us that gang violence is not novel, but it has not always been so lethal. The benchmark sociological study of the urban gang is Frederick Thrasher's research on 1,313 Chicago gangs published in 1927. The disorder and violence of these gangs appalled Thrasher, who observed that they were beyond the ordinary controls of police and other social agencies. He described gang youth, of which only 7.2 percent were "Negro," as "lawless, godless, wild." Why didn't more of them kill each other? They fought with fists and knives, not assault weapons.