Ross Coomber
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 250526 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Ross Coomber |
| NOMBRES | Ross |
| APELLIDO | Coomber |
| FIRMA | COOMBER R |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Plymouth |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8144-1996 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 41 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 106 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 41 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1997 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
When exploitation becomes local
A Rapid Appraisal of How Alcohol Is Screened and Treated Amongst Minoritised Ethnic Service Users Within Community Mental Health Settings
Making ‘safer injecting’ matter for people who inject image and performance enhancing drugs
Image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPEDs) are primarily injected intramuscularly or subcutaneously, yet traditional harm reduction strategies, focused on blood-borne virus prevention, often overlook the specific health enhancement goals of people who use IPEDs. This study advocates for a collaborative approach to safer injecting practices, informed by the lived-living experiences of people injecting IPEDs, to develop targeted messaging that a…
Criminal exploitation and vulnerability in drug markets
In the UK, the recent ‘turn to vulnerability’ in safeguarding and the criminal justice system has meant an increasing recognition that many children and vulnerable adults committing crimes, such as drug dealing, are in fact victims of criminal exploitation involving manipulation and coercion. This recognition is fairly recent, and the visibility of exploited children and adults is impacting how they are dealt with and safeguarded. In other parts …
Policing and drug market-related violence
Based on our empirical findings, we argue for a conceptual broadening of current understandings of drug market-related violence, as well as further developing harm reduction policing thinking and responses to effectively counteract all forms of violence associated with drug markets and their control
Development, dissemination and community response towards the first community notice regarding misrepresented illicit anabolic‐androgenic steroids in circulation in Australia
Tracing the Impact of Media, Cultural Narratives, and Social Perceptions on Australia's Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Communities
Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are used for performance and image enhancement, yet their non-medical use in Australia is heavily criminalized and framed by sociocultural narratives that emphasize risk, deviance and harm. This study aimed to critically examine how people who use AAS experience these narratives, focusing on challenging their role in perpetuating stigma and reinforcing punitive responses. The study employed a peer-led approach t…
Exploring experiences with alcohol and how drinking has changed over time among minority ethnic groups with a diagnosed mental health problem
There were specific reasons to cope among minority ethnic individuals who have a mental health problem. Applying an intersectional lens provided an insight into the role of cultural and gendered expectations on mental health and drinking practices. Mental health literacy and implicit cultural expectations within specific minority ethnic groups can affect both mental health and drinking practices. Healthcare professionals and wider community play …
Beyond the dark web
Common depictions of buying and selling illicit drugs online centre on how drug market actors engage in dark web drug cryptomarkets, but the supply of illicit drugs also takes place in ‘plain site’ on the surface web. Drawing on netnographic observations and qualitative interviews with hard-to-reach buyers and vendors (n = 20), this paper explores LeafedOut, a specific, popular surface web platform, that provides a conduit for local cannabis exch…
Sentencing for social supply of illicit drugs in Australia
In Australia, threshold quantities of illicit drugs act as an indicator of supply offences in distinguishing traffickers from users. This is problematic because it can be difficult for the courts to discriminate between heavy users or ‘social suppliers’ and ‘dealers proper’. Currently, there is no systematic analysis of how the judiciary in Australia navigate the relationship between different types of supply and the consistency and proportionali…
Do Online Illicit Drug Market Exchanges Afford Rationality
Rational choice perspectives have been the dominant models used for conceptualizing the nature of exchanges in illicit drug markets, but various critiques have found these abstracted assumptions inadequate for understanding concrete illicit drug market activity. Considerably less, however, is known about key aspects of rationality in exchanges within online drug markets. Recognizing the inadequacies of an underlying homo economicus , we instead c…
Selling Drugs on Darkweb Cryptomarkets
Cryptomarkets, anonymous online markets where illicit drugs are exchanged, have operated since 2011, yet there is a dearth of knowledge on why people use these platforms to sell drugs, with only one previous study involving interviews with this novel group. Based on 13 interviews with this hard to reach population, and data analysis critically framed from perspectives of economic calculation, the seductions of crime, and drift and techniques of n…
Drugsforsale
Barriers and facilitators of maintained smoking abstinence following release from smoke-free prisons
Public Spitting in ‘Developing’ Nations of the Global South
The burgeoning recognition and accommodation of the social supply of drugs in international criminal justice systems
Student transitions into drug supply
Drug use, like much criminality, is often explored in relation to the journey into adulthood. Though young people are understood to commonly ‘grow out’ of crime, protracted transitions from adolescence into adulthood have brought about a new developmental phase where many young people are freer to engage in drug-related leisure and other forms of subterranean play in a period of extended adolescence. In this article, we look to this phase with fo…
The risk environment of anabolic–androgenic steroid users in the UK
Symbolic policing
The policing of local drug markets in England often takes the form of specific, high-profile, crackdown operations which themselves are mostly a generic, periodic response to particular criminality. Drawing on Innes’ (2004) concept of ‘control signals’ and Edelman’s (1985) notion of ‘symbolic policy’, we argue that ‘symbolic policing’ relates to activity that is principally about achieving symbolic aims – ‘being seen to be doing something’ rather…
What does it mean to be innovative
Earning a Score
Research consistently shows a strong correlation between heroin/crack cocaine use, acquisitive crime and income generation, through activities such as sex work and theft. Less is known however about alternative choices of income generation such as small-scale drug supply. Drawing on data from interviews with 30 heroin and crack cocaine user-dealers in a city in South West England, this article explores the motivations, practices and roles underta…
Crushing a Walnut With a Sledge Hammer? Analysing the Penal Response to the Social Supply of Illicit Drugs
The evidence base relating to illicit drug markets, drug supply activities and drug seller characteristics increasingly presents a picture of diversity, whereby differing motivations for supplying suggest different levels of culpability and divergence from a homogenised image of the drug dealer. This paper seeks to explore one specific aspect of this divergence, that of social supply and how the Criminal Justice System currently deals with this i…
How social fear of drugs in the non-sporting world creates a framework for doping policy in the sporting world
Doping policy is usually presented as though it sits separate from other societal issues, and yet in part, it is clearly a reflection of the broader concerns and historical responses to drug use in the non-sporting world. This is an under-researched aspect of doping policy formation and continuity. With reference to a number of key 'drug myths' and a broad discursive framework of fear and 'othering' in the non-sporting world, this article will at…
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Use of Visual Methods in Social Research
[No abstract]
Public injecting drug use and the social production of harmful practice in high-rise tower blocks (London, UK)
Using the Internet for Survey Research
The Internet and electronic mail increasingly offer the research community opportunities that it did not previously have. Access to information has increased as has access to and discussion with those working in similar areas. One other aspect of 'cyberspace' which presents enormous possibilities to the research community, currently in its infancy, is the use of the Internet to reach individuals as research subjects. In particular, there may be s…
Symbolic policing
The policing of local drug markets in England often takes the form of specific, high-profile, crackdown operations which themselves are mostly a generic, periodic response to particular criminality. Drawing on Innes’ (2004) concept of ‘control signals’ and Edelman’s (1985) notion of ‘symbolic policy’, we argue that ‘symbolic policing’ relates to activity that is principally about achieving symbolic aims – ‘being seen to be doing something’ rather…
Signing your life away
This brief commentary discusses the problematic incursion of Research Ethics Committees on social research, particularly on those groups who wish (and/or indeed it is vital for their safety) to remain anonymous. It is argued that REC's, often ignorant of social science methodology, commonly attempt to impose restrictions on research and researchers that contradict their own ethical guidelines and expose them to unreasonable risk. It is further po…
Selling Drugs on Darkweb Cryptomarkets
Cryptomarkets, anonymous online markets where illicit drugs are exchanged, have operated since 2011, yet there is a dearth of knowledge on why people use these platforms to sell drugs, with only one previous study involving interviews with this novel group. Based on 13 interviews with this hard to reach population, and data analysis critically framed from perspectives of economic calculation, the seductions of crime, and drift and techniques of n…
Earning a Score
Research consistently shows a strong correlation between heroin/crack cocaine use, acquisitive crime and income generation, through activities such as sex work and theft. Less is known however about alternative choices of income generation such as small-scale drug supply. Drawing on data from interviews with 30 heroin and crack cocaine user-dealers in a city in South West England, this article explores the motivations, practices and roles underta…
Value in the Visual
This paper concerns the application of visual methods within qualitative research and the ways in which they can be developed and applied to a range of settings for applied health (and other policy) purposes. Traditionally visual methods have been used as adjunct means to record data and representations of individuals, groups and cultures. Having emerged from a research tradition deeply rooted within the field of social/cultural anthropology they…
Fluorescent blue lights, injecting drug use and related health risk in public conveniences
Crushing a Walnut With a Sledge Hammer? Analysing the Penal Response to the Social Supply of Illicit Drugs
The evidence base relating to illicit drug markets, drug supply activities and drug seller characteristics increasingly presents a picture of diversity, whereby differing motivations for supplying suggest different levels of culpability and divergence from a homogenised image of the drug dealer. This paper seeks to explore one specific aspect of this divergence, that of social supply and how the Criminal Justice System currently deals with this i…
How social fear of drugs in the non-sporting world creates a framework for doping policy in the sporting world
Doping policy is usually presented as though it sits separate from other societal issues, and yet in part, it is clearly a reflection of the broader concerns and historical responses to drug use in the non-sporting world. This is an under-researched aspect of doping policy formation and continuity. With reference to a number of key 'drug myths' and a broad discursive framework of fear and 'othering' in the non-sporting world, this article will at…
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Use of Visual Methods in Social Research
[No abstract]
Injecting drug user views (and experiences) of drug-related litter bins in public places
Informal ‘Sorter’ Houses
Student transitions into drug supply
Drug use, like much criminality, is often explored in relation to the journey into adulthood. Though young people are understood to commonly ‘grow out’ of crime, protracted transitions from adolescence into adulthood have brought about a new developmental phase where many young people are freer to engage in drug-related leisure and other forms of subterranean play in a period of extended adolescence. In this article, we look to this phase with fo…
Public injecting drug use and the social production of harmful practice in high-rise tower blocks (London, UK)
Do Online Illicit Drug Market Exchanges Afford Rationality
Rational choice perspectives have been the dominant models used for conceptualizing the nature of exchanges in illicit drug markets, but various critiques have found these abstracted assumptions inadequate for understanding concrete illicit drug market activity. Considerably less, however, is known about key aspects of rationality in exchanges within online drug markets. Recognizing the inadequacies of an underlying homo economicus , we instead c…
Generalizing Applied Qualitative Research on Harm Reduction
The small sample sizes and context-bound findings of qualitative research are commonly viewed as significant factors that limit its use (or “transferability”) in settings other than those in which the research was originally conducted. This perceived limitation is of particular importance in a field such as harm reduction where small sample sizes may be the only realistic option for studying the behavior of hard to reach groups. In this article w…
Using the Internet for Survey Research
The Internet and electronic mail increasingly offer the research community opportunities that it did not previously have. Access to information has increased as has access to and discussion with those working in similar areas. One other aspect of 'cyberspace' which presents enormous possibilities to the research community, currently in its infancy, is the use of the Internet to reach individuals as research subjects. In particular, there may be s…
How the media do drugs
Signing your life away
This brief commentary discusses the problematic incursion of Research Ethics Committees on social research, particularly on those groups who wish (and/or indeed it is vital for their safety) to remain anonymous. It is argued that REC's, often ignorant of social science methodology, commonly attempt to impose restrictions on research and researchers that contradict their own ethical guidelines and expose them to unreasonable risk. It is further po…
From the deal to the needle
The article uses a semi-structured interview method to assess the acquisition, preparation and use of heroin in a cohort of 114 drug users in contact with treatment services in south-east London, and examines the impact of the increase in crack availability on heroin use and preparation in this population. Seventy-six participants reported using heroin on a daily basis, involving an average of 2.8 hits and using a mean of 0.75 g on each using day…
Drug use and drug market intersections
(2004). Drug use and drug market intersections. Addiction Research & Theory: Vol. 12, No. 6, pp. 501-505
Arenas of Drug Transactions
The issue of the social supply of illicit drugs is an important one because it delineates a separate category of “dealing,” whereby friends supply or facilitate supply to other friends. Supply of this nature has been argued to be sufficiently different to “dealing proper” to justify a different criminal justice approach in relation to it. This has been argued to be particularly true regarding social supply among young people who use substances su…
Hooked on Heroin
Lalander, P. Hooked on Heroin: Drugs and Drifters in a Globalized World , 2003 , Oxford : Berg xi + 201pp . £50 ISBN 1 85973 762 5 (hbk) £15.99 ISBN 1 85973 767 6 (pbk) As I write this review I am still unclear about what I think of this book. This is because it is an ad-mixture of parts that sit informatively but awkwardly within the drug-field literature but also within contemporary ethnography and sociology - none of which is necessarily a bad…
Public injecting and symbolic violence
The concept of symbolic violence as developed by Pierre Bourdieu concerns the way in which social and cultural control is tacitly maintained by the dominating and the dominated within a given milieu. This article considers Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence in the context of public injecting environments in an urban location in the South West of England. Specifically, symbolic violence was considered to be present in the policies and practice…
Injecting drug users
Introduction to the Rapid Response on the Current Financial Crisis/'Credit Crunch
Introduction to the Rapid Response on the Current Financial Crisis/‘Credit Crunch’
Informal ‘Sorter’ Houses
Value in the Visual
This paper concerns the application of visual methods within qualitative research and the ways in which they can be developed and applied to a range of settings for applied health (and other policy) purposes. Traditionally visual methods have been used as adjunct means to record data and representations of individuals, groups and cultures. Having emerged from a research tradition deeply rooted within the field of social/cultural anthropology they…
Fluorescent blue lights, injecting drug use and related health risk in public conveniences
Public injecting drug use and the social production of harmful practice in high-rise tower blocks (London, UK)
Injecting drug user views (and experiences) of drug-related litter bins in public places
Generalizing Applied Qualitative Research on Harm Reduction
The small sample sizes and context-bound findings of qualitative research are commonly viewed as significant factors that limit its use (or “transferability”) in settings other than those in which the research was originally conducted. This perceived limitation is of particular importance in a field such as harm reduction where small sample sizes may be the only realistic option for studying the behavior of hard to reach groups. In this article w…
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Use of Visual Methods in Social Research
[No abstract]
Crushing a Walnut With a Sledge Hammer? Analysing the Penal Response to the Social Supply of Illicit Drugs
The evidence base relating to illicit drug markets, drug supply activities and drug seller characteristics increasingly presents a picture of diversity, whereby differing motivations for supplying suggest different levels of culpability and divergence from a homogenised image of the drug dealer. This paper seeks to explore one specific aspect of this divergence, that of social supply and how the Criminal Justice System currently deals with this i…
How social fear of drugs in the non-sporting world creates a framework for doping policy in the sporting world
Doping policy is usually presented as though it sits separate from other societal issues, and yet in part, it is clearly a reflection of the broader concerns and historical responses to drug use in the non-sporting world. This is an under-researched aspect of doping policy formation and continuity. With reference to a number of key 'drug myths' and a broad discursive framework of fear and 'othering' in the non-sporting world, this article will at…
Earning a Score
Research consistently shows a strong correlation between heroin/crack cocaine use, acquisitive crime and income generation, through activities such as sex work and theft. Less is known however about alternative choices of income generation such as small-scale drug supply. Drawing on data from interviews with 30 heroin and crack cocaine user-dealers in a city in South West England, this article explores the motivations, practices and roles underta…
What does it mean to be innovative
The risk environment of anabolic–androgenic steroid users in the UK
Symbolic policing
The policing of local drug markets in England often takes the form of specific, high-profile, crackdown operations which themselves are mostly a generic, periodic response to particular criminality. Drawing on Innes’ (2004) concept of ‘control signals’ and Edelman’s (1985) notion of ‘symbolic policy’, we argue that ‘symbolic policing’ relates to activity that is principally about achieving symbolic aims – ‘being seen to be doing something’ rather…
Public Spitting in ‘Developing’ Nations of the Global South
Psychology (23 obras) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (21 obras) · Sociology (21 obras) · Political science (20 obras) · Business (17 obras) · Medicine (15 obras) · Computer Science (12 obras) · Public relations (12 obras) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (11 obras) · Criminology (11 obras)