Acta Criminologica: Southern African Journal of Criminology - latest Issue

This Special Edition of Acta Criminologica: Southern African Journal of Criminology draws attention to substance abuse issues in South Africa and internationally. In the opening article of the issue, ‘Substance abuse in the Punjab on the India-Pakistan border: Reflections from Anthropology’, Soumendra Mohan Patnaik and Loveena Sehra examine the myopic development scenario in the contemporary Punjab state in India, known for its erstwhile success in bringing on green and white revolution. Arguing that the state has witnessed rampant emergence of substance abuse owing to a variety of factors, primarily, it points to structural maladies faced by the state such as unemployment, poverty and absence of role models available to the youth. Over and above this, Punjab being a bordering state and a susceptible destination for drugs to be trafficked, remains caught in a vicious cycle of temptations and dangers related to substance abuse. The article provides a critical insight of how the youth, women and children of Punjab face the backlash of substance abuse and related sociopathy against the backdrop of the prejudiced norms of patriarchy, which further exacerbate the problem.

In spite of India’s strict prohibition rules on the use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, very few steps have been taken in terms of drug control laws in accordance with the laid out policies. Examining the myopic development scenario in contemporary Punjab State, India, known for its erstwhile success in green and white revolution, this article argues that the state of Punjab, India has witnessed the rampant emergence of substance abuse due to certain structural conditions such as unemployment, poverty and absence of role models available to the youth. It is imperative to understand the consequences of substance abuse on the wellbeing of an individual, institutions of family and the community at large. The location of Punjab on the India-Pakistan border has increased its vulnerability in terms of drug trafficking by putting India on the global drug network as a transit hub with its epicentre at Punjab. The porosity of the India-Pakistan border has further aggravated the drug trafficking and substance abuse thereby negatively impacting on the social fabric of societies along this border, as well as affecting national security.

This article contextualises the internet usage by the prototype of underground online marketplaces selling illicit drugs to users over the internet called Silk Road. The establishment of this website in January 2011 was facilitated specifically by the existence of the so-called ‘Dark Net’, of the ‘Dark Web’ (a portion of the Deep Web) utilising the so-called ‘The Onion Router’ (TOR) system of anonymous network connections in order to facilitate the drug purchase and transaction payment by means of the cryptocurrency called ‘Bitcoin’. This article also traces how the US authorities stopped the operations of Silk Road (October 2013) and convicted its operator/web administrator (in 2015), Ross Ulbricht (aka ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ also known under the acronym of ‘DPR’), on charges of money laundering, drug trafficking (and a charge of attempted murder). In less than two-years Ulbricht had managed to build a multimillion-dollar drug operation. But while the ‘taking down’ of the Silk Road web-marketplace for illicit drugs was the first of its kind internationally, this did not stop ‘copycat’ ‘pop-up’ sites that continued to sell all kinds of drugs online. The US Federal Task Team set up to ‘take down’ Silk Road with Operation Marco Polo, in investigating Silk Road’s illicit drug operations, had implemented classic cyberforensic, as well as traditional crime investigation techniques, in an effort to build a strong ‘evidence’ case against Ulbricht. They had also drawn on ‘hacking’ tactics in exploiting computer vulnerabilities to ‘break’ into the Silk Road servers and download all user transactions for the sale of the illicit drugs – all assumed to be ‘anonymous’ and untraceable. But Ulbricht had made a number of fundamental ‘errors’ which allowed the US authorities to track him down and to penetrate the Silk Road servers. These mistakes allowed the FBI to ultimately build a ‘watertight’ case against him as the Silk Road operator and enabled them to secure a conviction against him.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight three issues: the surge of substance abuse (illicitly and illegally acquired mind altering substances such as drugs and alcohol) in South African schools, using case studies from Durban to illustrate the point; the extent of the problem in the major metropolises in the country; and the extent of engagement at the highest levels of authority within the country and internationally. Our purpose here is to use these three issues to demonstrate the ever widening schism between the realities in moral regeneration and moral degeneration. Information below, gathered through personal interviews and secondary sources (literature) shows that a major contributory factor in this surge is unemployment and the festering problems of slum areas. In the absence of meaningful employment in developing countries such as South Africa, the complicity between high ranking politicians and ordinary people finds captive markets among substance abusers in areas of indigent populations. Although not central to this paper the role of internationally known espionage agencies such as the CIA to “fight enemies of democracy” is also briefly raised here to demonstrate the virtual helplessness against moral degeneration. There is a force and terror associated with these processes that has the inevitable tendency to silence people of authority, such as school principals and local leaders. In between the highest echelons among the politicians and drug lords and the ‘insignificant abuser’ is the silent population that often remains quiet out of sheer fear to oppose them. It is this reality, as the information below demonstrates, that the widening the gap between the forces of moral regeneration and moral degeneration prevails.

The increasing percentage of youth reporting to addiction centres and clinics for treatment, positions illicit drug abuse as a major health and social issue in the Western Cape (The South African Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (SACENDU), 2015; Fakier & Louw, 2009). The Youth Research Forum (UNISA Bureau of Marketing, 2012) suggests that innovative and multi-faceted approaches to drug and alcohol prevention be introduced. This is underscored by Chetty (2015:60) who also proposes that school and community support programmes must foreground “normative principles of welfare, wellness, respect, ethics and caring for each other as fundamental steps for the social well-being of poor communities”. Given such calls, this article argues that there are innovative prevention initiatives that community members are attempting in addressing the problem. This article derives from a larger qualitative study of a Cape Flats community, which sought to understand the environmental and personal contexts of children that impel them towards gangsterism and illicit drug use. What emerged from the data was an innovative community upliftment model being implemented by a self-reformed gangster and drug user. This exploration is not an advocacy of that initiative, but an attempt to explain the workings of this model. The article reviews the research concerning community intervention in illicit drug use, provides a description about the methodology used in this study and undertakes a thematic analysis of the voices of the participants, namely: 1) the family and home contexts of children in the community, and 2) a community upliftment project. It is suggested working at the level of children and youth with a prevention model that invests personal care and a warm, loving family environment for those children that are denied this, may be a preventative strategy to help children make positive choices to reduce illicit drug use and other risky behaviour for future generations.

This article provides a youth narrative on drug abuse and gangsterism in the Cape Flats suburb of Mitchell’s Plain. The narrative engages with the experiences within a single street, Shepherd Way, in one of the highest crime areas in South Africa. The account attempts to bring temporal order to what would otherwise be experienced as a series of chaotic events, given the social complexity characteristics of gangsterism and drug abuse. Narratives often run counter to expectations, making the familiar unfamiliar, and seldom does a story have a single reading or meaning. This study provided an opportunity for the researcher to engage with young persons’ lived experiences by committing to holding conversations with them using their concerns as a starting point. In this case, the focus issue being drug abuse and how it influences their quality of life. The primary purpose then of the article was to engage with the ways in which youth name their reality in high crime areas concomitant with foregrounding the voice of the youth via research into their lives. Hence, this narrative is also a commitment to valuing and attending to the here-and-now of young people’s experiences rather than just focusing on the researcher’s agenda of collecting data on drug abuse and crime. The theoretical underpinnings for the article are Bleakley’s (2005) notion of narrative inquiry and Solorzano and Yosso’s (2002) conception of counter-storytelling. The key finding emanating from this study being that the exposure of youth to anti-social learning in gang and drug subcultures, and the vacuity of economic opportunity in high poverty areas provide the ideal environment for drug abuse and violent gangs. The article demonstrates the importance of conversation and open dialogue embedded in an appreciation of the socio-economic context of vulnerable youth.

Thirty years after, Newcomb, Maddahian and Bentler (1986:525) claimed that, “Drug use amongst adolescents and young adults has become widespread during the past 25 years, with many characterising the increases as of epidemic proportions. Although it is not too surprising that many teenagers have experimented at some time with various drugs, problems begin to arise when this experimental use becomes regular use or abuse”. The only notable change since this statement has been an undeniable increase in adolescent drug use. Against this backdrop this study sought to directly investigate learner perspectives on illicit drugs amongst a sample of secondary school learners in a historically Indian working class area. A questionnaire with short phrased multiple option responses was used. Questions elicited responses on inter alia biographical data of participants, availability of drugs in the neighbourhood and counselling support by way of advising and listening to learners’ emotional challenges and guidance provided by the school. Data was generated from 176 learners. Liberante (2012:2) highlights the growing importance of student educator relationships. These relationships promote and create a greater sense of school belonging and have the potential to improve academic performance and overall student behaviour. Out of the 176 learners that participated in the study, nearly sixty three percent (62.5%) of learners maintained that their school is supportive towards them and just above sixty percent (60.8%) of learners indicated that there is a positive learner-educator relationship. Other important themes that emerged were; the influence of environmental factors on adolescent drug use and the ways in which learners manage stress. Among the recommendations emanating from the research being that: i) a larger scale research project using the same instrument be undertaken; ii) that a qualitative study with a smaller number of learners in the sampled school be done in order to ascertain how educators may improve support for learners with emotional challenges and the types of support that learners prefer.

This article summarises what is known from a large-scale survey study undertaken for a Masters dissertation about prevalence and trends in alcohol and drug use among the University students in recent years. The major focus of this article is on alcohol and drug use among students attending from year one to year four at the Pretoria West Campus. For purposes of simplification, part-time students were excluded. Many part-time students have jobs, families and other activities that make the experience of being a student quite different than that of the full-time student whose primary identification is ‘student.’ A descriptive design was used, utilising both quantitative and qualitative research methods. A total of 60 students participated in this study and the research was done at the residences of the Pretoria West Campus of Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria. A random cluster sampling procedure was utilised to select potential respondents. This approach turned out to be a cost effective way to generate a high response rate and a large, representative sample. The Pretoria West Campus of Tshwane University of Technology has seven residences, which accommodate a large number of students from all over the continent. Some of the residents are only for women, and some are for both genders. The results showed that alcohol and drug use rates are high among the students. The survey instrument, an extension of the original interview schedule, includes, in addition to assessments of alcohol and drug use, assessments of violence, harassment, assault issues and policy awareness and enforcement issues. The study provides with possible recommendations, on how the university management should pay special attention to the causative factors and elements associated with insecurity in the residences, especially the phenomenon of illegal drug and alcohol abuse in residences.

This article investigates whether the implemented strategies sought to turn youth attitudes against illicit drug use had yielded the required results as expressed by the participants in the Jabavu and Moroka Townships in Soweto, South Africa. With an understanding that the efforts to reduce the prevalence of illicit drugs amongst the youth will not be successful if tackled by one or by a few role players, this article investigates the effectiveness or otherwise of a partnership between the relevant role players towards strengthening communities to prevent drug use among the adolescents. Four Focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with thirty-six participants. This comprised of ten police officials from the Moroka Police Station, eight members from the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (SANCA) officials, ten representatives from the local Community Police Forums (CPFs) as well as eight lecturers from the South West Gauteng Technical and Vocational Education and Training College in Soweto. The first FGDs were conducted with SAPS officials selected from a pool of Police Act (Act 68 of 1995) personnel who perform operational duties, crime prevention, community service centres and sector policing in this area. The second FGDs were conducted with SANCA officials who work with the addicted youth. The third FGDs involved the representatives, the local CPF and the fourth FGDs consisted of, teachers from the South West Gauteng Technical and Vocational Education and Training College. The results of this article indicated that the required collaboration is seen as a key strength of the identified strategies by all four FGDs participants, SAPS, SANCA, CPF and lecturers. It was found that the majority of the participants indicated that they did not feel confident that they could deliver effective substance abuse prevention strategies to the youth. Based on the findings of this article, it is recommended that youth focused prevention initiatives include school-based and skills training programmes for the adolescents; monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness or otherwise of the programmes that teach parents and guardians how to enforce family rules that discourage alcohol and illicit drug use; as well as community-based programmes that combine these components with additional printed and electronic media.

Drug addiction is a worldwide problem. Amongst a plethora of problems, drug addiction and how it should be dealt with, remains a big challenge for law enforcement agencies in South Africa and elsewhere. This is the reason why the South African Police Service has tried over years to develop and implement an intervention strategy on drug dealing, usage and addiction. Drug addiction and its resulting consequences tend to influence the different approaches adopted by the police. However, the majority of interventions by the police, the public sector, the private sector and civil society have proved to be inadequate and less effective in many countries, including South Africa. This ineffectiveness can, in the case of South Africa, be attributed to the policing approaches followed, as well as the nature of the interventions aimed at curbing drug addiction, particularly with reference to the increases in the use of the so-called drug ‘nyaope’.1 The current South African statistics for nyaope addicts and its consistent increase, is but one piece of evidence that these interventions are inadequate and less effective. The research problem is, therefore, anchored on the perception that the police appear to continue to rely on old strategies, even though nyaope use has only become popular in more recent times and brings its own unique challenges in comparison to other drugs that have been used for a very long time. A qualitative analysis was, therefore, conducted in South Africa in order to formulate a profile of nyaope addicts. It is postulated, therefore, that there should be a direct link between a nyaope addict profile and the policing strategy to be used to combat the use of this drug. This article draws on data generated from interviews conducted with law enforcers and investigators, those who are involved in the fight against drug addiction, interviews with nyaope addicts (and their families), as well as from literature pertaining to drugs. This research concludes that there is a discord between dealing with this problem and the policing strategies to combat drug abuse currently being adopted. It further concludes that the implications for the police include a need for a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary and multi-departmental approach to the problem of nyaope addicts. Although there are a myriad of strategies, policies, working committees and legislation aimed at dealing with the problem of drug addiction, there is still a lack of co-ordination of these efforts. These are complicated by a popular belief that the police should deal with this problem on their own. Salient issues such as the apportioning of blame to the police, the absence of a social development component and fragmented intervention continue to defeat the purpose on drug addiction efforts and their effectiveness in dealing with nyaope addiction.

Possibly one of the best accounts on the cultivation of gangs in the Cape Town area, Pinnock provides real-life narratives on ‘how’ and ‘why’ they joined the gangs. The author, furthermore, depicts how a marginalised and displaced population became infested with gangs in areas surrounding Cape Town. Prominent gang areas such as the Cape Flats, Lavender Hill, Hanover Park, Heideveld, Mitchel’s Plain, Bonteheuwel, Manenberg, Woodstock, Salt River, Elsies River, Nyanga, Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, and Harare are sketched for the reader. Reasons for gang formation are drawn from racial segregation, the break-down of families, the devastating effect of apartheid, gangs becoming surrogate families, overcrowded townships, children roaming the streets, absence of recreational facilities, poor social ties, limited opportunities, poor schooling, boredom and criminal and violent role models. Pinnock portrays how generations of family gang membership, parental or sibling imprisonment and the death of significant others plays a pertinent role in gang belonging. He successfully outlines how violence begets violence, and how children living in such circumstances are “on a road to nowhere”. The author also provides insight into gang fights for reasons such as revenge, power, recognition, territory and “battles over drugs and honour”.