The Communal Impacts of Drug Criminalization in Maryland

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entrepreneurship, and individual people, who within the context of this lens are seen as pillars of the community and therefore critical parts of Black civil society. Our historical analysis reveals more players within Black civil society in Baltimore, which is expanded upon by our interviewees later in this report. Defining Reparations from African-Centered Research Paradigms African-Centered and Black nationalist scholars argue that Black communities have consistently produced social and political systems to meet their collective needs as demonstrated by pre-colonial African society, maroon societies throughout the Americas, and independent post-reconstruction Black communities (37). However, the capacity of these communal systems has been denigrated by racist attacks ranging from the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, reconstruction resistance, Jim Crow, and more contemporarily, the War on Drugs (15). From the perspective of our interviewees and the community scholar guiding this research process, reparations should be seen as a key tool in rebuilding the institutional capacity of indigenous Black civil society that existed before the War on Drugs through reparative redistribution of power and resources. Interviewees described visions of communities where people thrive and have the power to define for themselves what thriving looks like. This report challenges a traditional definition of reparations, which are often defined by government entities. For example, the United Nations defines reparations with a focus on compensation and rehabilitation (United Nations Human Rights). Many have made the case for reparations that go beyond individual payments and look to address collective harms based on slavery and post-slavery history in the U.S. (37,38). In this report, we define reparations through the lens of ACRPs, which centers on repair of community harm. This should not require repressed communities to depend on their oppressors, but instead repressed communities should have the funding, indigenous institutional capacity, and autonomy to be able to construct for themselves their own solutions (23). Scoping Review First a scoping review of peer-reviewed literature was conducted to examine the extent, range, and nature of drug criminalization and the social conditions of communities most often targeted by drug interdiction efforts in the United States, Black/African communities and people who use drugs. A scoping review is used for summarizing understudied research, addressing multiple questions that give rise to the complexity of a topic area, reveal gaps and limitations (39). Given our theoretical and empirical understanding of the social disruption related to drug criminalization among Black communities in Maryland and the lack of attention to Black civil society in traditional academic literature, we used the concept of social capital as a baseline to frame how the literature describes the community-level implications of drug criminalization. Additionally, the community-based scholar was informed by Black elders who work on community economic development and have used social capital in their work to analyze how policy might be rethought to center Black civil society institutions which produce productive interconnections within the Black community (40). Given our goal to assess the implications of drug criminalization on community, factors such as social capital and pinpointing the social harms justified for repair, we conducted a scoping review and analyzed the literature using Putnam’s social capital theory which delineates social capital, indigenous and external to the community (41). Social capital is an important collective feature of social and economic well-being (42). It serves as a form of community agency to share and exchange resources, support, and material goods through personal and institutional assets of cooperation. For example, we evaluated the role of social institutions between members of similar and different social and economic identities among communities most often targeted by drug interdiction. A classical definition of Black social capital refers to interpersonal and institutional forms of cooperation within African-American communities, while social capital harnessed outside the community describes cross-sector patterns of trust and networks that bridge the Black and White divide (12). Community integrity determines quality of life and mediates access to local networks of organizations and institutions; therefore, the review considers non-profits, Black civil society institutions, schools, and health care facilities, etc, both locally and externally controlled (43). The scoping review also examined the body of literature on the structural and environmental influences on these social relationships and evaluated the extent of race consciousness (i.e., if structural racism is acknowledged) in the published 19 of 55
works. Specifically, we looked at how literature incorporates the role of Black civil society institutions in social capital research. We used Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) five-stage scoping review framework (44), with reporting guided by the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews checklist and explanation (PRISMA-SCr): (1) research question development, (2) literature search, (3) study selection, (4) data charting and extraction, and (5) data analysis and narrative synthesis. For full description of the methods, see appendix. Scoping Review Findings Research that examines the impact of drug criminalization on the social infrastructure and civic institutional fabric of communities faced with high levels of drug addiction and criminalization is minimal. A few papers outlined the role of drug criminalization on community-level aspects. Out of 46 articles related to social capital and drug criminalization, 23 described social capital relationships local to the community, 11 described social capital externally linked to communities, and 12 described both internal and external relationships of social capital. Five studies incorporated participatory or community-informed methods. In the review of social capital relationships, there was an emphasis on the disruption of family relationships and minimal research on the impact of drug criminalization on the community environment (45–52). There was little research on the relationship between drug criminalization and the social erosion of community sources of support, like faith-based organizations, and more research on sources of support that operated outside of community control, such as government and non-profit drug treatments (53–62). This focus was on social capital by defining it in terms of the relationship with community members who use drugs with treatment-providing institutions. The research often framed sources of support external to impacted communities as vehicles for success, rather than on studying how structural racism and other modes of oppression destabilizes communal conditions and indigenous forms of social capital. Although research and practice seek to address the material suffering caused by hyper-incarceration and addiction, 20 of 55
Page 1 and 2: THE COMMUNAL IMPACTS OF DRUG CRIMIN
Page 3 and 4: Acknowledgements We would like to t
Page 5 and 6: “groupthink”. Also, I realize t
Page 7 and 8: Decriminalize Blackness First “It
Page 9 and 10: Indeed, this quote comes from a for
Page 11 and 12: criminal elements involved in the i
Page 13 and 14: Reparations Means Community Repair,
Page 15 and 16: The Communal Impacts of Drug Crimin
Page 17 and 18: The community-based scholar is info
Page 19: Definitions Black Civil Society Thi
Page 23 and 24: working with other Black Power orga
Page 25 and 26: Pseudonym Occupation/Community Role
Page 27 and 28: limiting a pipeline. There’s not
Page 29 and 30: “Black and brown people are being
Page 31 and 32: health and for community education?
Page 33 and 34: friendship community, 'cause heroin
Page 35 and 36: “And then actually right out of F
Page 37 and 38: 3. Decriminalization does not recog
Page 39 and 40: “It’s the values that people ha
Page 41 and 42: A local pastor family interviewed r
Page 43 and 44: Policymakers and researchers intere
Page 45 and 46: advocates trust the experience of o
Page 47 and 48: powerful independent Black institut
Page 49 and 50: trust working-class people in turn
Page 51 and 52: systemic corruption and incompetenc
Page 53 and 54: & The Baltimore “Black Hole” [I
Page 55 and 56: Dan Baum investigates whether gun-c
Page 57: © 2023

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