This research has thus allowed me to provide additional empirical arguments, adding to the data accumulated since 2015 during a previous research conducted in France on the pathways of engagement in organized crime and the stratification of criminal worlds. This stratification refers to the system of differentiation and hierarchy and stem from at least four interdependent dynamics:
- differentiated policing and punishment regime
- unequal access to delinquent opportunities
- the quest for upward social mobility of offenders
- finally, the internal structuring of criminal spaces (hierarchization, mobility dynamics, division of criminal labor, etc.)
The first dimension is the subject of numerous studies. It is the last three points that have been the subject of particular scrutiny during the UCOC project, notably through the analysis of the places, norms and actors that structure and animate distinct, hierarchical and sometimes connected domains of crime. In other words, particular attention has been paid to the interactions and plasticity of the boundaries between the "underworld" and the "upperworld".
Our choice to focus primarily on the specific issue of drug trafficking has borne fruit. It is a criminal market with local, national and international ramifications. It implies a division of labor and a hierarchy of positions between implementers, service providers and decision makers, but also an economic and financial division of the market according to the position and strategic role of the different actors.
The initial phase of the UCOC project consisted of collecting literature on organized crime in New York City, as well as multiplying contacts within and outside the university in order to prepare for the empirical phase of data collect. I studied several public reports, police and judicial data, journalistic and autobiographical literature, and conducted a review of recent organized crime court cases in New York federal courts. I then had many meetings with academics, experts and journalists whose work is at least partly focused on the study of organized crime.
The data collect relied primarily on qualitative interviews conducted mostly in detention, with individuals formerly involved in the higher and organized spheres of crime. In order to do this, I made numerous contacts with justice officers, particularly in the probation services. I also met with the former commissioner of the New York City prison system.
The fieldwork then really started from December 2018, with a first interview in a New York State prison with the leader of one of the most important gangs in New York, whose place is central in the wholesale distribution of cocaine. This was followed by ten more interviews conducted both in and out of prison, and a second wave of interviews conducted in New York City and Los Angeles. In parallel, between the months of November 2018 and February 2019, I attended the trial of the former head of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin Guzman Loera, in the Federal Court of Brooklyn. The opportunity to collect precise and detailed information on the organization of drug trafficking in its transnational dimension, on the background of the main accused and his former accomplices. I accumulated more than 160 pages of notes, judicial documents and elements of proof presented at the trial by the American government (wiretapping extracts, surveillance reports, testimonies of central characters of the narcotraffic and the action of the security forces).
