Dealing with privilege in a Nordic welfare state? How experiences with, and perceptions of, police, markets, and violence shape decision-making among affluent drug dealers
| Published date | 01 January 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14773708241272737 |
| Author | Eirik Jerven Berger |
| Date | 01 January 2025 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Dealing with privilege in a
Nordic welfare state? How
experiences with, and
perceptions of, police, markets,
and violence shape
decision-making among
affluent drug dealers
Eirik Jerven Berger
University of Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Recent research on privileged drug offenders argues that they are at an advantage compared to
marginalized people dealing drugs. The main question asked in this article is whether this is also
the case in a more egalitarian country like Norway, and if it influences dealers’decision-making.
Findings reveal that privileged drug dealers believed they were at an advantage when it came to
police and customers compared to people with an ethnic minority background or people dealing
in open drug markets, but at a disadvantage in relation to violence and robberies. With regards to
decision-making, believing they had advantages in encounters with the police informed their deci-
sion to be cooperative expecting fair treatment. Believing they were at an advantage with affluent
customers in wealthy communities, and at a disadvantage with more street-oriented drug dealers,
restricted privileged drug dealers’dealing to affluent low-risk contexts. The advantages and disad-
vantages privileged drug dealers talk about in interviews arguably reflect real-life drug market
inequalities but are also a mechanism shaping decision-making that may reproduce drug market
inequality. The study adds knowledge to the nascent literature on affluent drug dealers by intro-
ducing a novel case.
Keywords
Disadvantage, drug dealing, illegal drug markets, privilege, punishment, violence
Corresponding author:
Eirik Jerven Berger, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Post Box 1096,
Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway.
Email: e.j.berger@sosgeo.uio.no
Article
European Journal of Criminology
2025, Vol. 22(1) 127–146
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14773708241272737
journals.sagepub.com/home/euc
Introduction
There are many potential dangers of engaging in illegal drug dealing. Importantly, people
selling illegal drugs can receive formal sanctions by criminal justice systems, experience
stigmatization, or become victims of violence (Jacques and Wright, 2008; Taylor, 2008;
Topalli et al., 2002). However, the social cost of illegal drug use and drug dealing is not
shared equally among the population. Research indicates that the populations most likely
to suffer these negative consequences are low-income and living in inner-cities (Mosher,
2001), people who use or sell in open street-based drug markets (Gerell et al., 2021), and/
or people who have an ethnic minority background (Shiner et al., 2018). Conversely, a
nascent body of research finds that white, middle and upper class people dealing drugs
in closed markets to affluent customers are the group least likely to be punished by
police, experience stigmatization, or become victims of violence (e.g., Jacques and
Wright, 2015; Mohamed and Fritsvold, 2010). The main question asked in this article
is whether these illegal drug market inequalities are relevant in a more egalitarian
country like Norway, and if so, whether perceptions of advantages or disadvantages
shape offender decision-making. To answer this question, I review the relevant existing
international literature, compare it to the past research on illegal drug markets in Oslo,
and draw on interviews and observations with relatively privileged drug offenders
from affluent communities in Oslo.
Literature review
Role of class and race/ethnicity in illegal drug market inequality
Being caught and punished by the police for drug law infractions constitutes one of the
major downsides of illegal drug market participation. While most people who use or dis-
tribute drugs are never criminalized (Askew and Salinas, 2019), studies repeatedly show
that those most likely to be stopped, arrested, and subsequently punished come from
lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and/or ethnic minority backgrounds (Shiner et al.,
2018). Conversely, those least likely to, for instance, receive a drug charge come from
the upper classes (Pedersen et al., 2022) and/or are white (Geller and Fagan, 2010).
The underlying mechanisms for why privileged drug offenders avoid punishment are
most convincingly elaborated in two studies from the USA. Mohamed and Fritsvold’s
(2010) study of middle-class white US ‘dorm room dealers’shows how these illegal
drug entrepreneurs ‘amassed enough symbolic capital to grant them a certain degree of
legal immunity despite their rampantly illegal drug activities’(132). The university
relied on these students’tuition for revenue and on their social status for its brand repu-
tation (Mohamed and Fritsvold, 2010). The authors indicate that the fact that their
research participants were white or acted ‘white’provided a protective seal against the
police, along with their class (Mohamed and Fritsvold, 2010).
The second major study is provided by Jacques and Wright’s (2015) ethnography of
middle-class white youth dealing illegal drugs in a wealthy Atlanta suburb. The authors
make important comparisons between these well-to-do youths and studies on people with
minority backgrounds in urban settings (Jacques and Wright, 2015). For instance,
128 European Journal of Criminology 22(1)
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