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Social supply plays a key role in bottom level cannabis markets. In outlining how social supply of cannabis differs from commercial market exchange, existing studies have argued that social supply is typically driven by two cultural logics: reciprocal gift-giving and sharing. Importantly, researchers have depicted sharing as a sub-version of a more generalized pattern of reciprocation and/or described sharing as a type of transfer that is motivated by altruism on the part of the giver. However, in this article, we argue that if we are to develop a more nuanced understanding of the sharing aspects of social supply, we need a more refined understanding of sharing. Based on interviews with 38 young cannabis users from Denmark, this article draws on recent anthropological theories of sharing and the concept of “demand sharing” (Widlok, 2017) in demonstrating how social cannabis supply is driven both by reciprocal logics, but also by hitherto overlooked sharing logics that cannot easily be captured by the categories reciprocity or altruism. More specifically, we analyze the important role played by receivers in facilitating sharing processes. We outline how diverse “receiver demands” are often the precondition for creating the social pressure that leads those who have, to allow others to take. In this way, this article contributes to a more detailed understanding of the complex transfer processes fueling social supply of illicit drugs. Social supply plays a key role in bottom level cannabis markets. In outlining how social supply of cannabis differs from commercial market exchange, existing studies have argued that social supply is typically driven by two cultural logics: reciprocal gift-giving and sharing. Importantly, researchers have depicted sharing as a sub-version of a more generalized pattern of reciprocation and/or describedsharing as a type of transfer that is motivated by altruism on the part of the giver. However, in this article, we argue that if we are to develop a more nuanced understanding of the sharing aspects of social supply, we need a more refined understanding of sharing. Based on interviews with 38 young cannabis users from Denmark, this article draws on recent anthropological theories of sharing and theconcept of “demand sharing” in demonstrating how social cannabis supply is driven both by reciprocal logics, but also by hitherto overlooked sharing logics that cannot easily be captured by the categories reciprocity or altruism. More specifically, we analyze the important role played by receivers in facilitatingsharing processes. We outline how diverse “receiver demands” are often the precondition for creating the social pressure that leads those who have, to allow others to take. In this way, this article contributes to a more detailed understanding of the complex transfer processes fueling social supply of illicit drugs.

Based on Goldsmith’s (2010, ‘Policing’s New Visibility’, British Journal of Criminology, 50: 914–34) assertion that police work has acquired a ‘new visibility’ with the ubiquity of cell phone cameras, recent studies have explored how ‘video activists’ often film the police as means of protecting marginalised ethno-racial communities. However, limited research exists on how non-activist ethno-racial minority young people use cell phone cameras in encounters with the police. Based on 37 interviews conducted in Denmark, this paper explores the multifaceted nature of marginalised ethnic minority young people’s use of cell phone cameras in police encounters. We demonstrate how the filming of officers is interwoven with the young people’s street culture, and how the use of cameras holds the potential to counter traditional power imbalances, while nevertheless, potentially exacerbating their antagonism towards the police.

Ord som pusher, narkohaj eller dødens købmænd er blandt de betegnelser, som ofte bruges om personer, der sælger illegale rusmidler. Men verden er ikke så simpel som gode eller onde mennesker, og der er brug for en mere nuanceret og mindre dæmoniserende forståelse af mennesker, der sælger illegale rusmidler.

In recent decades, the selling and purchasing of illicit drugs has been increasingly mediated by use of communication technologies such as mobile phones and social media apps. While the risk of police intervention has traditionally restricted dealers’ use of advertisements to attract customers, the increasing technologization of retail-level drug markets has opened up new avenues for dealers’ use of proactive marketing. This article contributes to the understanding of current transformations of the retail-level drug market by providing insight into how drug dealers compete for and try to attract customers by use of strategic and targeted advertising. Based on an in-depth analysis of the textual and visual content of 99 illicit »drug commercials« circulated through SMS-based (Short Message Service) drug lines, we demonstrate how drug dealers draw on a number of psychological and cognitive techniques such as repetition, association, humour, hooks, slogans and storytelling, all of which are also found in legal marketing. We conclude by arguing that there is a need for more studies on how »drug commercials« affect drug users’ purchasing practices, including their choice of dealer.

The composition, use, policies, and the societal position of cannabis are changing and diversifying internationally. Cannabis has emerged as an object of much controversy and is subject to varying forms of regulation. Its role and regulation is also debated in the Nordic countries. To shed light on such developments, this special issue sets out to explore how the phenomenon of cannabis, and related policies and subjectivities, are currently made, unmade, and transformed in multiple ways through discourses, practices, and materiality, and with different consequences. The composition, use, policies, and the societal position of cannabis are changing and diversifying internationally. Cannabis has emerged as an object of much controversy and is subject to varying forms of regulation. Its role and regulation are also debated in the Nordic countries. To shed light on such developments, this special issue sets out to explore how the phenomenon of cannabis, and related policies and subjectivities, are currently made, unmade, and transformed in multiple ways through discourses, practices, and materiality, and with different consequences.

Several studies worldwide have demonstrated that ethnic minorities are more likely to be stopped, questioned and searched by the police. In this paper, we explore how police officers themselves discuss and make sense of ethnic disparities in police stops. Based on interviews with 25 police officers in two police precincts in Denmark the paper illustrates how officers actively reflect on the (un)importance of ethnicity for policing. Findings point to how the officers both rejected that ethnicity directly mattered for who they chose to stop, as well as how they offered alternative and indirect explanations for why ethnic minorities were stopped more often.

Recent years have seen trends within police to use different forms of “community policing” strategies that aim to foster closer relationships and trust with citizens, as well as an orientation toward “procedural justice” in law enforcement practices. Based on 25 interviews with police officers in two different police precincts in Denmark, this article explores the policing of ethnic minority youth in so-called “ghetto” areas from the perspectives of police officers. In doing this, we describe the specific challenges and strategies in implementing such policing methods in neighborhoods where some residents display low trust or even hostility toward the police. The article sheds light on the emotional, organizational, and practical challenges involved in doing community policing in marginalized neighborhoods and the way in which this shapes how community policing is being organized in practice.

Background: As with other areas of life, drug markets have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions. This article examines how structurally vulnerable people who use drugs (PWUD) experienced and adapted to changes in street drug markets caused by lockdown measures. Methods: The article builds on ethnographic fieldwork in two Danish cities in 2020, including in-depth interviews with 22 PWUD, and interviews with 20 service providers, including low-threshold service providers and outreach workers. Results: The most consistently reported effect of lockdown measures on local drug markets related to increases in cannabis prices. Accounts of changes in drug availability varied greatly, with some participants reporting changing availability while others described the situation as similar to pre-lockdown conditions. Rather than a long-term drug shortage, changes reported by participants related to the anticipated disruption of local markets and drug scarcity, restrictions in access to cash and sellers seeking to capitalize on the crisis. Conclusion: Although no long-term drug scarcity was seen, the anticipation of a shortage was sufficient to impact on local drug market dynamics. Heterogeneity in PWUDs’ experiences of access to drug markets during lockdown can to some degree be explained in terms of their varied embeddedness in social networks. While local markets proved resilient to lockdown measures, PWUD less embedded in social networks were more vulnerable to shifts in drug availability and to sellers' over-pricing of drugs.

Mens flere internationale studier har peget på, at væksten i nattelivsøkonomien udgør en udfordring for mange storbybeboeres livskvalitet, fællesskab og sundhed, så mangler der i dag dybdegående viden om, hvordan det alkoholbaserede nattelivs lyde opleves og påvirker voksne og ældre beboere. For at belyse dette anvender dette kapitel 25 interviews med voksne og ældre beboere i Indre By i København. Kapitlet viser, hvordan nattelivets lyde opleves som støjforurening, der invaderer og krænker beboernes hjem og personlige rum, samt hvordan det ekspanderende natteliv både er katalysator for ny urban socialitet, samt for intense kampe om ’retten til byen’.

Young men living in socially deprived areas are more likely to be exposed to criminal activity and extraordinary policing measures. This article focuses on the narratives of police encounters told by ethnic minority young men living in a deprived neighbourhood in Denmark, defined by the Danish government as a ‘ghetto’. In total, 76 young men and 6 young women (age 15 to 26) were interviewed between 2016 and 2017. The article focusses on their experiences of the police’s use of force, interpreted as violence by the participants. We have categorized their experiences into three types: unnecessary use of force, inconsistent violence, and humiliation/insults. While police violence is often understood as primarily physical, we also show that in the young people’s recollections of these incidences, issues of ‘moral violence’ becomes important. While not only specifically violating the body, this type of violence also affects the integrity and dignity of individuals. Our participants recounted forms of violence, which were extra-judicial in terms of physical use of force and they described how the police used indirect and degrading techniques of violence, some of which can be categorized as sexual harassment, embarrassment and public humiliation. From their perspectives, police power appeared unpredictable and illegible.

This article highlights the perspective of 39 young men who live and have friends in a Danish high-risk neighborhood. We look into their use of microlevel tactics to socialize with crime-involved friends while managing to abstain from crime. Maintaining this balance was a constant everyday processual negotiation of friendship relations, moral obligations, and risk assessment. However, the most severe consequences of having criminal friends were to endure police control and potentially be known and registered by the police as criminals or ‘gang-affiliated’. In that way, the criminal justice system was deeply entangled in the social lives of these young people.

Et konkurrencepræget stofmarked og mere krævende stofsalgsmetoder er nogle af de faktorer, som kombineret med øget marginalisering og ulighed i samfundet gør, at nogle udsatte unge udnyttes af erfarne kriminelle til at begå narkokriminalitet. Denne artikel fremlægge centrale fund fra et trendspotterstudie fra 2020, hvor vi ved at spørge ind til 291 fagpersoners konkrete viden om det danske rusmiddelfelt og/eller udsatte borgeres liv kortlægger generelle og nye mønstre i narkotikakriminelles udnyttelse af udsatte unge.

While Canada, Uruguay and several US States have legalised cannabis in recent years, and many European countries have implemented or are considering decriminalisation as an option, Denmark is one of the few Western countries that seems to be going in the opposite direction, away from a lenient decriminalisation policy and towards a more restrictive approach. In this chapter, we analyse how the emergence of a new discursive and politically potent framing of youth and recreational drug use as customers in a criminal market, and hence as the market basis for organised crime, has in recent years led to intensified police campaigns specifically targeting drug users.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how new policies and standards to professionalise nightclub bouncing along with customer-oriented service imperatives affect bouncers’ work practices and identities. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork among Danish bouncers and uses the concept of “emotional labour” and related ideas of “interactive service work” to explore how service imperatives play out at political/commercial and organisational levels and how such initiatives are negotiated by bouncers in their work practices. Findings Until recently, the nocturnal work of bouncers had been relatively unaffected by labour market service paradigms. This is now changing, as policy initiatives and the capitalist service economy colonise ever greater domains of the urban night and the work conducted here. We argue that trends towards professionalisation have landed bouncers in a double-bind situation, in which they are increasingly faced with competing and sometimes contradictory occupational imperatives requiring them both to “front up” effectively to unruly patrons and to project a service-oriented persona. We show how bouncers seek to cope with this precarious position by adopting a variety of strategies, such as resistance, partial acceptance and cultural re-interpretations of service roles. Originality/value While existing research on nightclub bouncers has primarily focussed on bouncers’ physical regulation of unruly guests, this paper provides a theoretical framework for understanding current policy ambitions to “domesticate” bouncers and shows how attempts to construct bouncers as civilised “service workers” is fraught with paradoxes and ambiguities.

Markedet for illegale rusmidler er ikke kun et sted, hvor der sælges og købes. Det er også et forum for deling og udveksling. Unge har ofte adgang til rusmidler via venner og bekendte, og de betragter sig selv som brugere mere end som købere og sælgere.

Background In 2004 the Danish parliament repenalised possession of illicit drugs for personal use after it had been depenalised for 35 years. This article analyses the introduction of a more repressive drug policy in Denmark by studying how drug use and drug users were problematized in two key government whitepapers and how this problematization articulated a more general problematisation of ‘a culture of intoxication’ among young Danes. The analysis also shows how the policy change involved a change of governmentality away from a welfarist and towards a neo-liberal governmentality. The analysis particularly focuses on the implications of these problematisations for the constitution of young drug users a ‘governable subjects’. Methods The article takes its inspiration from research that has applied governmentality theory to analyse drug policy and particularly how the governmentalities that drug policies articulate involve different subjectifications of drug users. Within this overall framework the article also takes inspiration from Carol Bacchi's post-structural approach to policy analysis to show the assumptions about young people, drugs and how to govern them before and after the policy change. Results The new drug policy articulated new ways of problematising drug use and the young drug user. Drug use was no longer defined as more or less socially conditioned but as an individual choice made by a rational actor. Punishment for violating the drug legislation should make the drug user responsible for his or her transgressions and deter others from making similar transgressions. Conclusion Research has shown that neo-liberal discourses can lead to more empowering and harm reduction oriented drug policies. This is not the case in Denmark. Here neo-liberal discourses led to a more repressive drug policy. Briefly accounting for some of the lived effects of the new drug policy, the article shows how socially disadvantaged parts of the Danish population bears the burden on the more punitive drug policy. This more repressive drug policy goes against the trend in several other European countries that have become less repressive. However, even if Danish drug policy has become more repressive, the legal measures taken against drug users in Denmark are still fairly ‘mild’ compared with the legal measures taken against drug users in other countries.

In efforts to combat organised crime, police forces have adopted variations on the pulling levers approach to individuals and groups identified with gun crime, drug supply and other serious offences. Once identified, those individuals and their networks are targeted for interventions from criminal justice agencies and their partners. When levers are pulled, criminals find their lives made intolerable by the attentions of multiple agencies. Identifying the right people for this sort of attention and the quality and currency of police intelligence are, then, key concerns for such strategies. But the choice of levers, and their implications also raise some difficult questions. The law is explicitly applied differently to those associated with organised crime than to anyone else. This paper reviews evidence from two ethnographic studies, one of police officers in three police forces in England and Wales, the other from a third-party policing arrangement in the Danish night-time economy. We seek to understand the ways in which levers are understood and used, raising questions about the efficacy of pulling levers.

Vestlige storbyer har siden 1970’erne oplevet en massiv vækst i den alkoholbaserede fest- og nattelivsøkonomi. Transformationen af den indre storbys nat til en fest- og forbrugszone har afstedkommet voksende problemer med uorden, vold og kriminalitet. Barer og natklubber ansætter derfor ofte dørmænd til at ekskludere urolige personer, der anses som en trussel mod beværtningernes generering af økonomisk profit. Set i lyset af at dørmænd, i deres forsøg på at regulere nattelivets urolige kroppe, ofte selv er udsat for vold og trusler, trækker denne artikel på nyere maskulinitetsforskning og Lyngs teori om ’kantarbejde’ til at belyse, hvad der får mænd til at give sig i kast med dette risikofyldte og emotionelt udfordrende arbejde. Artiklen giver ydermere et indblik i, hvordan (dør)mænds maskulinitetskonstruktioner og forsøg på at håndtere voldsrelaterede risici og frygt er centrale elementer i skabelsen af profit i den kapitalistiske nattelivsøkonomi.

In early club studies, nightlife domains are often depicted as scenes where class and ethno-racial boundaries are dissolved into post-modern cultural formations. This article adds to a growing body of research challenging this characterization, by exploring how the policing of nightlife accessibility contributes to the (re)production of ethnic divisions and inequalities in nocturnal consumer spaces. Based on ethnographic research in Denmark, the article explores the key governmental rationalities informing bouncers’ exclusion of visible ethnic minority men. The article argues that bouncers’ ethnic governance is a multi-dimensional process which can be analyzed using different analytical approaches. While the first part uses the concept of ‘vernacular risk perception’ to highlight how bouncers’ ethnic governance is driven by loss-reductive logics, combined with prejudiced thinking, the second part uses an interactional perspective to illustrate how bouncers’ ethnic governance is also the product of situated power struggles between bouncers and minority youth. Thirdly, I use a performative perspective to demonstrate how the exclusion of minority men is also driven by intra-group processes and implicated in bouncers’ dramatized in-group construction of masculine identities. In conclusion, I discuss how a focus on bouncers’ ethnic governance and regulation of access can contribute to the study of (nightlife) youth culture. In early club studies, nightlife domains are often depicted as scenes where class and ethno-racial boundaries are dissolved into post-modern cultural formations. This article adds to a growing body of research challenging this characterisation, by exploring how the policing of nightlife accessibility contributes to the (re)production of ethnic divisions and inequalities in nocturnal consumer spaces. Based on ethnographic research in Denmark, the article explores the key governmental rationalities informing bouncers’ exclusion of visible ethnic minority men. The article argues that bouncers’ ethnic governance is a multi-dimensional process which can be analysed using different analytical approaches. While the first part uses the concept of ‘‘vernacular risk perception’’ to highlight how bouncers’ ethnic governance is driven by loss-reductive logics, combined with prejudiced thinking, the second part uses an interactional perspective to illustrate how bouncers’ ethnic governance is also the product of situated power struggles between bouncers and minority youth. Third, I use a performative perspective to demonstrate how the exclusion of minority men is also driven by intra-group processes and implicated in bouncers’ dramatised in-group construction of masculine identities. In conclusion, I discuss how a focus on bouncers’ ethnic governance and regulation of access can contribute to the study of (nightlife) youth culture.

I de senere år har udbredelsen af „nye“ kommunikationsteknologier forandret måden, hvorpå illegale rusmidler handles og distribueres. Handel med illegale rusmidler foregår i stigende grad på online kryptomarkeder, sociale medier eller ved hjælp af mobiltelefoner. Berry (2018) har derfor konkluderet, at stofmarkeder bedst kan forstås som sociotekniske netværk, da de i stigende grad formes i samspillet mellem sociale og teknologiske processer. På den baggrund belyser artiklen, hvilken rolle brugen af mobiltelefoner spiller i udformningen af stofhandel baseret på et de-ringer-vi-bringer-koncept. I artiklen argumenteres der for, at et fokus på de forskellige måder, stofsælgeres salgstelefon bliver „enacted“ (Law 1999) på, kan fungere som en prisme, hvorigennem vi kan få indblik i de forskellige og delvis overlappende sociotekniske netværk (Mol 2002), som i dag giver form til det mobiltelefonbaserede budservicemarked for illegale rusmidler i Danmark. Artiklen er baseret på interviews med aktive stofsælgere og -købere. Den viser, hvordan salgstelefonen artikuleres på fem forskellige måder: som et redskab til intern koordinering af budserviceforretningen, som et kommercielt passagepunkt for stofkunder, som et svagt led, som politiet forsøger at udnytte til at opspore salgs/købsnetværk, og som en vare og et middel til fjendtlig markedsovertagelse, som når kriminelle enten sælger telefonbaserede kundeporteføljer eller forsøger at erobre markedsandele ved at stjæle deres konkurrenters salgstelefoner. Søgeord: stofmarked, mobiltelefon, narkotikahandel, narkotikasælgere, aktørnetværk, Danmark

Recently, many countries have changed their cannabis policy by introducing medical cannabis and/or by moving toward different forms of legalisation and/or decriminalisation. Researchers have thus argued that traditional notions of cannabis as a singular and coherent object, are gradually being replaced by perspectives that highlight the multiple ontological character of cannabis. At the same time, there is growing recognition that drug policy is not a unitary phenomenon. Based on the idea that drug policy is composed by multiple “policy areas” each defined by particular notions of what constitutes the relevant policy “problem”, this article explores how Danish cannabis policy is composed of different co-existing framings of cannabis use; as respectively a social problem, a problem of deviance, an organised crime problem, a health- and risk problem and as a medical problem. While the international trend seems to be that law-and-order approaches are increasingly being replaced by more liberal approaches, we show how Denmark, on an overall level, seems to be moving in the opposite direction: Away from a lenient decriminalisation policy of cannabis use and towards more repressive approaches. We demonstrate how the prominence of discursive framings of cannabis use as a “problem of deviance” and as “a driver of organised crime”, has been key to this process. Aim:This article traces recent developments in Danish cannabis policy, by exploring how “cannabis use” is problematised and governed within different co-existing policy areas.Background:Recently, many countries have changed their cannabis policy by introducing medical cannabis and/or by moving toward legalisation or decriminalisation. Researchers have thus argued that traditional notions of cannabis as a singular and coherent object, are being replaced by perspectives that highlight the multiple ontological character of cannabis. At the same time, there is growing recognition that drug policy is not a unitary phenomenon, but rather composed by multiple “policy areas”, each defined by particular notions of what constitutes the relevant policy “problem”.Design:We draw on existing research, government reports, policy papers and media accounts of policy and policing developments.Results:We demonstrate how Danish cannabis policy is composed of different co-existing framings of cannabis use; as respectively a social problem, a problem of deviance, an organised crime problem, a health- and risk problem and as a medical problem.Conclusion:While the international trend seems to be that law-and-order approaches are increasingly being replaced by more liberal approaches, Denmark, on an overall level, seems to be moving in the opposite direction: Away from a lenient decriminalisation policy and towards more repressive approaches. We conclude that the prominence of discursive framings of cannabis use as a “problem of deviance” and as “a driver of organised crime”, has been key to this process.

Forbrug af illegale stoffer som heroin, kokain, ecstasy og cannabis har været fokus for forskningen ved Center for Rusmiddelforskning siden centrets oprettelse

Background: Illegal drug dealers no longer compete for customers only through the quality of their products, but also in convenience and speed of delivery. This article investigates "ring and bring" drug dealing, and argues that a focus on dealers' use of mobile phones is useful for exploring current changes within retail level drug markets.Methods: The article is based on 21 face-to-face in-depth interviews with active drug dealers in Denmark all of whom were involved in the delivery of drugs (mainly cannabis and cocaine) often to buyers' homes.Results: Contrary to studies emphasising how drug dealers often take up new communication technologies with enthusiasm, the dealers in this study displayed a technological conservatist stance. Moreover, mobile phones have become key to dealers' construction of in-group hierarchies, and have led to retail level drug selling becoming more flexible, individualised and more of a service on par with other services in the consumer society. Finally, the increasing use of mobile phones has also created a situation where portfolios of drug customers, held on cell phone SIM cards, are today traded and sold alongside other commodities in the drug economy.Conclusion: We show how a social constructivist approach to technology can provide a more detailed and nuanced account of the socio-technical ensemble and the meaning-making processes giving shape to retail level "delivery dealing". Background: Illegal drug dealers no longer compete for customers only through the quality of their products, but also in convenience and speed of delivery. This article investigates "ring and bring" drug dealing, and argues that a focus on dealers' use of mobile phones is useful for exploring current changes within retail level drug markets.Methods: The article is based on 21 face-to-face in-depth interviews with active drug dealers in Denmark all of whom were involved in the delivery of drugs (mainly cannabis and cocaine) often to buyers' homes.Results: Contrary to studies emphasising how drug dealers often take up new communication technologies with enthusiasm, the dealers in this study displayed a technological conservatist stance. Moreover, mobile phones have become key to dealers' construction of in-group hierarchies, and have led to retail level drug selling becoming more flexible, individualised and more of a service on par with other services in the consumer society. Finally, the increasing use of mobile phones has also created a situation where portfolios of drug customers, held on cell phone SIM cards, are today traded and sold alongside other commodities in the drug economy.Conclusion: We show how a social constructivist approach to technology can provide a more detailed and nuanced account of the socio-technical ensemble and the meaning-making processes giving shape to retail level "delivery dealing."

While drug dealing organised as drop-off delivery services is not a new phenomenon, research indicates that it is on the rise. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction recently described how the European cocaine market is undergoing a process of “[u]bernisation”, where sellers promote additional services beyond the productf, such as “fast delivery anywhere at any time” (2018, p. 18). Based on the assumption that developments in retail-level drug distribution are fuelled by supply-side as well as demand-side processes, this paper reports findings from a qualitative study in Denmark exploring user motivations for purchasing drugs from delivery dealers. While drug dealing organized as drop-off delivery services is not a new phenomenon, research indicates that it is on the rise. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction recently described how the European cocaine market is undergoing a process of ‘[u]bernisation’, where more sellers promote additional services beyond the product itself, such as ‘fast delivery anywhere at any time’. Based on the assumption that developments in retail-level drug distribution are fuelled by supply-side as well as demand-side processes, this paper reports key findings from a qualitative study in Denmark exploring user motivations for purchasing drugs from drop-off delivery dealers.

Forebyggelse er et kerneforskningsområde på Center for Rusmiddelforskning, og vi fortæller her om nogle af centrets vigtigste bidrag inden for alkoholforebyggelse

In existing recovery studies, binary distinctions between ‘spoiled’ identities defined by drug-related practices and relationships on the one side, and ‘un-spoiled’ drug-free identities on the other, are dominant. Similarly, in contexts of youth drug-treatment, substance-using friends are generally viewed as ‘bad company’, while non-using friends are considered as recovery promoters. This article, however, joins the growing chorus of qualitative researchers beginning to question critically this ‘spoiled-unspoiled’ distinction. Based on 30 qualitative interviews with 15 young people recruited from a Danish drug-treatment database, we investigate how drug-experienced youth perform recovering identities vis-à-vis their still-using friends. Employing a performative approach to identity formation, we demonstrate how such identity processes play out, and the dilemmas and ambivalences they entail. For example, while drug-using friends are regularly positioned as ‘bad company’, this is often accompanied by sentiments such as loss and frustration. Our analysis suggests that young people in recovery are easily trapped between societal expectations related to factors such as education on the one hand, and comfortability and connectedness with friends on the other. However, by means of carefully balanced ‘borderwork’, participants did occasionally manage to integrate using friends into their recovering identities without positioning them as ‘bad company’ per se. On this basis, we discuss whether breaking bonds with friends who still use drugs is imperative for any process of recovery, and argue that treatment programmes should focus on reconfiguring drug-related friendships, while taking seriously the notion that recovering youth are not necessarily interested in abandoning relations with drug-using friends.

De seneste års skifte i retningen af mere individualiserede forebyggelsestiltag, der virker gennem afskrækkelse og forbud, har betydet, at et voksende antal unge i dag oplever at være ekskluderet fra hele nattelivsområder i længere perioder. Dette har skabt et behov for bedre forståelser af, hvordan unge oplever og forholder sig til det at få et restaurationsforbud i nattelivet. I denne artikel anvender vi interviews med 10 forbudsdømte unge fra Aalborg og kvantitative data over fra politiets database POLSAS til at give et indblik i, hvordan unge rent faktisk forholder sig til det at få et forbud fra et helt nattelivsdistrikt. Vi argumenterer for, at dette fokus kan give os en bedre forståelse af udvidede restaurationsforbuds både tilsigtede kriminalpræventive effekter, og deres til tider utilsigtede negative effekter i unges liv og risikoadfærd.

This article explores the social significance of violence as potentiality and performance among former headhunters. Taking its outset in an ethnographic study of violence and masculinity among the Philippine people known as the Bugkalot, we explore how violence as “performed violent potentiality” plays a critical role in relation to Bugkalot men’s construction of hegemonic masculinity and the sustaining of complex egalitarian relations. The Bugkalot have a notoriously violent history; until the late 1970s more than half of the adult men engaged in ritual killings. While most Bugkalot men has today abandoned headhunting, the potentials for violence and dominance, which the act of headhunting sought to elicit, remains a critical aspect of masculinity. We propose that a focus on the social significance of performative violent potentiality among Bugkalot men can provide general insights that can also be used in other contexts to understand how men construct hegemonic masculinity by strategically adopting the interspace of civility and violence. This article explores the social significance of violence as potentiality and performance among former headhunters. Taking its outset in an ethnographic study of violence and masculinity among the Philippine people known as the Bugkalot, we explore how violence as “performed violent potentiality” plays a critical role in relation to Bugkalot men’s construction of hegemonic masculinity and the sustaining of complex egalitarian relations. The Bugkalot have a notoriously violent history; until the late 1970s more than half of the adult men engaged in ritual killings. While most Bugkalot men has today abandoned headhunting, the potentials for violence and dominance, which the act of headhunting sought to elicit, remains a critical aspect of masculinity. We propose that a focus on the social significance of performative violent potentiality among Bugkalot men can provide general insights that can also be used in other contexts to understand how men construct hegemonic masculinity by strategically adopting the interspace of civility and violence.

This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to find avenues for alternative identity construction and to gain transitional experiences which trigger self-confessed desistance actions. Drawing upon an ethnographic study conducted in a boxing rehabilitation centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, the paper reports on data gleaned from participant observation and qualitative interviews with 22 ethnic minority young men. Findings suggest that the masculine context within the rehabilitation programme provided the young men with a safe space to perform broader versions of locally dominated views on masculinity and to reflect on their current situations and dilemmas. The young men were clearly in transition and their desistance journeys were characterized by hope and ambition but also disappointment and despair. In some cases it appeared that the young men's dogged attempts to desist from crime became a new way for them to ‘do masculinity’. The authors draw upon the findings to make recommendations for policy, practice and research.

Juvenile justice systems and reformatory institutions hold the potential to help young offenders and drug abusers change their behaviours and life-courses. Driven by an ambition to pave new ways to examine the inner workings of reformatory institutions this study explores how young male offenders’ gendered identities are engaged in a Danish reformatory programme. In recent years existing research on the gendered aspects of reformatory interventions has highlighted how reformatory institutions at times work to promote desistance by problematizing offenders’ and drug-abusers’ performance of hyper-masculinity and by constructing therapeutic spaces where men can reformulate softer versions of masculinity. Contributing to this line of research, this study explores and discusses how reformatory programmes at times also utilize hyper-masculine symbolism and imaginaries to encourage young offenders and drug abusers to engage in narrative re-constructions of identities and to socialize these into new subject positions defined by agency, self-responsibility and behavioural changes.

Purpose – Over the last decade a substantial pool of research has emerged on bouncers and their influence on the safety conditions in nightlife environments. Comparatively little, however, has been written on bouncers themselves and their working conditions. The purpose of this paper is to identify the perceived risks, stress and other work-related problems among bouncers working in Danish nightlife. Design/methodology/approach – A survey was conducted. In total, 238 bouncers were contacted and 159 of them completed a questionnaire. Findings – In total, 40 percent reported having been threatened with a weapon and 58 percent reported that they had been physically assaulted at work. Moreover, 16 percent reported feeling stressed and 50 percent reported weekly sleeping difficulties. Originality/value – These findings highlight some of the costs of working in the night-time economy. They may be used to improve the working conditions of bouncers and, by implication, help improve the general safety conditions in nightlife environments.

In many western countries the organization of policing is undergoing significant changes. Among the most important are the promotion of intelligence-led policing as a principal model of public policing, and the increased pluralization of policing. In recent years the former process has spurred a growing scholarly interest in information sharing within the police. Though new communication technologies have create novel possibilities for the dissemination of information, research show that interpersonal trust-building and contestations continue to shape information flows within the police institution. Less research however has explored how information exchange and trust plays into the formation and daily workings of plural policing complexes. This chapter seeks to advance our understanding of the importance of information flows in policing by exploring how the formation of informal collaboration and exchange of low-level intelligence between police and bouncers is instrumental in the enforcement of a police-promoted gang suppression strategy, aimed at transforming Danish nightlife into a no-go zone for gang-related individuals.

Overalt i den vestlige verden er illegale stofmarkeder og distributionssystemer under evig forandring. I Danmark er et af de mest åbenlyse eksempler på dette fremkomsten af forskellige former for budservicer, som i denne artikel kaldes for ’stofbudservicer’. På baggrund af 21 interviews med 19 aktive primært cannabissælgere giver denne artikel et rids over budservicemodellens historiske fremkomst og udvikling i Danmark, samt et indblik i, hvordan stofbudservicer er organiseret og er med til at forandre det dansk cannabismarked på detailniveau.

Current literature often depicts the street cultures of ethnic minority youth as forms of collective cultural resistance to experiences of marginalization from mainstream society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in 2014 with 23 young men attached to a rehabilitation centre for criminal offenders in Denmark, this article focuses on ethnic minority youth who desist from such street culture and their former gang life, criminality and drug use and how they describe this shift within their narratives. More specifically, we show how this shift can to some extent be characterized by a move from collective to more individualistic self-narratives re-articulating broader individualistic discourses existing in contemporary society. Among these more individualistic self-narratives, we find extensive reference to ideas of self-responsibility and also individual pragmatic interpretations of Islam. Such re-articulations can be seen as a way to create feelings of agency in severely dise...

Background: Zonal banning of disorderly and intoxicated young people has moved to centre stage in debates about nightlife governance. Whereas existing research has primarily focused on the use of zonal banning orders to address problems of alcohol-related harm and disorder, this article highlights how zonal banning is also used to target drug-using clubbers in Denmark.Methods and focus: Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with nightlife control agents in two Danish cities, the article aims to provide new insights into how the enforcement of national drug policies on drug-using clubbers, is shaped by plural nightlife policing complexes.Results: The paper demonstrates how the policing of drug-using clubbers is a growing priority for both police and private security agents. The article also demonstrates how the enforcement of zonal bans on drug-using clubbers involves complex collaborative relations between police, venue owners and private security agents.Conclusion: The paper argues that a third-party policing perspective combined with assemblage theory is useful for highlighting how the enforcement of national drug policies and nightlife banning systems is shaped by their embeddedness in local ‘drug policing assemblages’ characterized by inter-agency relation-building, the creative combination of public and private (legal) resources and internal power struggles. It also provides evidence of how drug policing assemblages give rise to many different, and often surprising, forms of jurisdiction involving divergent performances of spaces-, objects- and authorities of governance. Background: Zonal banning of disorderly and intoxicated young people has moved to centre stage in debates about nightlife governance. Whereas existing research has primarily focused on the use of zonal banning orders to address problems of alcohol-related harm and disorder, this article highlights howzonal banning is also used to target drug-using clubbers in Denmark.Methods: Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with nightlife control agents in two Danish cities, the article aims to provide new insights into how the enforcement of national drug policies on drug-using clubbers, is shaped by plural nightlife policing complexes.Results: The paper demonstrates how the policing of drug-using clubbers is a growing priority for both police and private security agents. The article also demonstrates how the enforcement of zonal bans on drug-using clubbers involves complex collaborative relations between police, venue owners and private security agents.Conclusion: The paper argues that a third-party policing perspective combined with assemblage theory is useful for highlighting how the enforcement of national drug policies and nightlife banning systems is shaped by their embeddedness in local ‘drug policing assemblages’ characterized by inter-agency relation-building, the creative combination of public and private (legal) resources and internal power struggles. It also provides evidence of how drug policing assemblages give rise to many different, and often surprising, forms of jurisdiction involving divergent performances of spaces-, objects- andauthorities of governance.