Search

Illegal drug trafficking and retail drug sales constitute the most common activity of organised crime groups in the UK and draw the largest share of resources from the police and prison services, whilst also generating considerable social costs. There are few contemporary studies in the UK on the supply of drugs, its organisation, culture and risk management practices, and even fewer on active dealers themselves. There remains limited ethnographic research into the drug trade, missing important insights that can be gained from observing distributors in a natural setting. A key absence in criminological literature is the voice of offenders who commit serious crimes and how they perceive and mitigate problems related to their activities. This research aims to fill gaps in the knowledge base by investigating the nature of the drug market, the crime risk management practices of drug dealers, and possible reasons for their involvement and patterns of activity. The study examines the criminal careers of offenders who operate in one of Britain’s largest cities, termed here anonymously as Red City. The participants in this study distribute and manufacture a range of illicit substances, both offline and online. They distribute drugs on local, national and international levels (retail, wholesale, import and export). To complement the fieldwork, interviews were conducted with official actors from the criminal justice system, the private sector and the third sector. The thesis seeks to provide a more nuanced and grounded picture of illicit drug dealing and ‘organised crime’, that provides an account that corrects popular stereotypes. The chapters proceed as follows: Outline of the thesis: Chapter one provides the introduction to the thesis. It identifies the research problem, sets the contexts of the study and explains how the thesis contributes to the field. Chapter two outlines the theoretical framework for the thesis; it combines life course criminology with perspectives taken from research on organised crime. It examines organised crime in terms of markets, networks, and organisations. Chapter three describes the methodological approach employed in this study and considers the ethical and practical challenges of researching illegal activity. Chapter four addresses the ‘start’ of the criminal career when actors first become drug dealers. It follows the lives of the ‘lads’, who make up a core of the participants in the study. Chapter five examines how drug dealing is conducted in the city streets. It draws upon ethnographic data from two parallel drug markets that sit at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their harms and ‘legitimacy’. Chapter six provides a sociohistorical analysis of organised crime in the nightclub scene to the present day. It draws upon insights from bouncers and drug dealers working in the field. Chapter seven addresses the effects of emergent technology in the drug trade. It examines how offenders employ digital technologies, both offline and online. Chapter eight addresses the desistance phase in the life-course. It discusses the factors that facilitate and inhibit desistance for individuals and groups of offenders. Chapter nine outlines and evaluates the key findings in the thesis. It makes policy recommendations to mitigate problems related to drugs and organised crime in the future. Throughout all chapters of the analysis, comparisons are made between offenders working in different drug markets and settings, to assess the relationship between their activities and the characteristics of the marketplace in question. The study finds that drug markets that are closest to ‘legitimacy’, in terms of their legal status and the public perception of the drugs, can have less risks for distributors. In light of this, they may be sold more openly and accrue lower levels of exploitation in the trade. Overall, this thesis demonstrates how serious offenders operate in rapidly evolving criminal markets, providing a significant contribution to the knowledge base.

In this dissertation, I explore the political and religious ideas expounded in Wagner's Ring, through close attention to the text and drama, the wealth of Wagner source material upon Wagner (e.g. correspondence, prose works, other dramas, diaries, contemporary accounts), and the multifarious intellectual influences upon the composer during the work's lengthy gestation and composition. Classical interpretations have tended to opt either for an 'optimistic' view of the Ring, centred upon the influence of Young Hegelian thought - in particular the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach - and Wagner's concomitant revolutionary politics, or for the aforementioned 'pessimistic' option, removing the disillusioned Wagner-in-Swiss-exile from the political sphere and stressing the undoubtedly important role of Arthur Schopenhauer. Such an 'either-or' approach seriously misrepresents not only Wagner's compositional method but also his intellectual method. It also sidelines inconvenient aspects of the dramas that fail to 'fit' whichever interpretation is selected. Wagner's tendency is not progressively to recent previous 'errors' in his œuvre; it is not Socratic. Radical ideas are not completely replaced by a Schopenhauerian world-view, however loudly the composer might come to trumpet his apparent 'conversion'. Nor is Wagner's truly an Hegelian method, sublating the partial verities arrived at hitherto into their allotted places in an intricate system of ever-changing dialectical mediation - although Hegelian dialectic plays an important role. In fact, Wagner is in many ways not really a systematic thinker at all (which is not to portray him as self-consciously unsystematic in a Nietzschean, let alone 'post-modernist' fashion). His tendency, rather, is agglomerative, ideas and influences proceeding to overlap, rather like a rudimentary geological overlay.

Cloned antibody binding sites (known as Fv antibody fragments) are attractive to the fine chemicals industry for several applications: in particular, as ligands in affinity chromatography. However, optimised systems for producing Fv fragments are not currently available. This thesis aims to establish new methods for the analysis and recovery of Fv antibody fragments that have been expressed in Escherichia coli cultures by recombinant DNA technology, thereby enabling improved control of the processes required for Fv production. An important objective was to prepare and test generic analytical reagents that bind all Fv fragments regardless of their specificity. Tracer antibodies were raised against a common peptide motif and used to design a generally applicable immunoassay for analysing Fv protein in microbial culture. The immunoassay was used as a component part in a new analytical system that can determine total Fv and active Fv independently, thus providing the fermentation scientist with a complete picture of the immunoreactivity or "authenticity" of the Fv throughout the process. Using an Fv specific for human gonadotropin as an example, the immunoreactivity of the Fv in the fermenter was found to approach 100%. A new process for recovering active Fv fragments from microbial cultures was designed and tested, using an Fv specific for estrone-3-glucuronide as an example. The new process was based on antigen affinity chromatography and used two antigen analogues: one as a column ligand, the other as a specific eluant. The recovery efficiency of active Fv was several-fold superior to that obtained with conventional methods. Overall, the results show that the analysis and recovery of Fv fragments are related in analytical and production systems: both require the preparation and synthesis of reagents that can discriminate between Fv and non-specific biomass and between active Fv and inactive Fv.