Judith Aldridge
Biographic Data
| ID | 4273173 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Judith Aldridge |
| GIVEN NAMES | Judith |
| FAMILY NAME | Aldridge |
| SIGNATURE | ALDRIDGE J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9402-8682 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 99 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The relationship between cryptomarket drug purchase, social networks and adverse drug events
People who reported purchasing drugs from cryptomarkets more commonly reported having no drug-using network, and cryptomarket purchase was associated with reported adverse events. Our results support the notion that cryptomarket use increases drug-related harm, but further disentanglement of multiple complex mechanisms is needed in future research
Research Handbook on International Drug Policy
Developments in encryption technology have facilitated new forms of digital drug trading. In this chapter, we provide an overview of cryptomarkets and the technologies that underpin them. Our examination of the history of cryptomarket development shows they have evolved in response to enforcement operations and threats from within the community, yet policy responses, whilst increasingly varied and sophisticated, remain in line with prohibition an…
Gendering research on online illegal drug markets
This paper reviews and critiques research on online illegal drug markets, arguing that existing conceptualizations and methodological approaches have resulted in a very limited discussion of women and questions of gender. The first part lays out the stereotypes and unarticulated assumptions that enable questions about women and gender to be side-lined, as follows: (i) that online anonymity rules out knowing about gender in online drug markets; (i…
No magic pocket
Coming Out”
Some personal experience of illicit drug use undoubtedly exists within the population of academic drug researchers. But it is rarely acknowledged, and even more rarely reflected upon, in their published work. This is understandable: criminal, professional and social sanctions may follow public admission of illicit activities. However, to not “come out” seems contrary to some core academic principles, such as transparency in data collection and re…
The value of unsolicited online data in drug policy research
We alert readers to the value of using unsolicited online data in drug policy research by highlighting web-based content relevant to drug policy generated by distinct types of actor: people who consume, supply or produce illicit drugs, online news websites and state or civil society organisations. These actors leave 'digital traces' across a range of internet platforms, and these traces become available to researchers to use as data - although th…
Leveraging the value of online data and methods
Does online anonymity boost illegal market trading
Anonymity allows the online trade in illegal products and services on cryptomarkets to flourish in spite of being enacted in a public location. Bolstered by the extensive media coverage of the cryptomarket trade in drugs, fraud and weapons, these platforms may function as a kind of criminal ‘gateway’, and in so doing facilitate – or indeed amplify – criminality. I argue, however, that researchers must establish – not assume – that the criminality…
An island apart? Risks and prices in the Australian cryptomarket drug trade
Delivery dilemmas
Silk Road participants neither viewed themselves as immune to, nor passively accepting of, the risk of detection and arrest. Rational choice theorists have viewed offending decisions as constrained by limited access to relevant information. Cryptomarkets as 'illicit capital' sharing communities provide expanded and low-cost access to information enabling drug market participants to make more accurate assessments of the risk of apprehension. The a…
Hidden wholesale
The cryptomarket may function in part as a virtual broker, linking wholesalers with offline retail-level distributors. For drugs like ecstasy, these marketplaces may link vendors in producer countries directly with retail level suppliers. Wholesale activity on cryptomarkets may serve to increase the diffusion of new drugs - and wider range of drugs - in offline drug markets, thereby indirectly serving drug users who are not cryptomarket customers…
Going international? Risk taking by cryptomarket drug vendors
Everything you always wanted to know about drug cryptomarkets* (*but were afraid to ask)
A response to Dolliver's “Evaluating drug trafficking on the Tor Network
Illegal Leisure Revisited
This book updates the progress into adulthood of the cohort of fourteen-year-olds who were recruited and tracked until they were eighteen years old. Illegal Leisure (1998) described their adolescent journeys and lifestyles, focusing on their early regular drinking and extensive ‘recreational’ drug use. This new edition revisits these original chapters, providing commentaries around them to discuss current implications of the original publication,…
Changing Adolescence
Mentoring Siblings of Gang Members
Mentoring has become a popular model of intervention to reduce the risk of offending, and has been proposed as an effective tool to tackle the risk of gang membership. This paper reviews the existing literature on mentoring and reports on a qualitative evaluation of a mentoring programme targeted at young people ‘at risk’ of gang membership in an English city. The study highlights important issues around these interventions. Although we found it …
Hidden Behind the Gunfire
This article uses data from a 3-year multisite ethnographic research study of gangs within an English city, to explore the different ways that "gang culture" shapes the victimization experiences and everyday lives of (young) women. Victims of lethal gang violence in Research City are almost exclusively young men, rendering invisible the ways in which gangs have an impact on the lives of women living in neighborhoods with a gang presence. The arti…
Marriage, mortgage, motherhood
Blame the Parents? Challenges for Parent‐Focused Programmes for Families of Gang‐Involved Young People
Parent‐focused interventions are a potentially effective tool for preventing and reducing gang involvement, although the challenges of delivering such services are considerable. Drawing from data collected over 26 months for the ethnographic study, Youth Gangs in an English City, including interviews with parents of gang‐involved young people, we identify potential obstacles. These include: psychological barriers to the participation of parents r…
Who needs enemies with friends like these? The importance of place for young people living in known gang areas
Despite a growing concern about gangs in Britain, academic research that focuses on gangs remains scarce. Drawing on data from the ESRC-funded ethnographic research YOGEC (Youth Gangs in an English City) project, this paper explores the negotiation of space and place by young people living in inner-city areas affected by gangs. Using a combination of fieldwork observations and focus group and interview data, this paper charts the experiences of n…
The Normalization of 'Sensible' Recreational Drug Use
Five key dimensions of normalization are identified: availability/access; drug trying rates; usage rates; accommodating attitudes to 'sensible' recreational drug use especially by non users; and degree of cultural accommodation of illegal drug use. A review of recent UK research is provided for each measure. The NW England Longitudinal Study continues to monitor normalization based on the recapture of 465 young adults (in year 2000) of a cohort p…
The Textual Disembodiment of Knowledge in Research Account Writing
Recent writers on autobiography and biography have questioned the extent to which the text represents a set of 'facts' about 'a life'. The following arguments question the extent to which the research account can be seen to represent a set of facts about the research process, in a simple and straightforward manner. Concepts problematized by writers on autobiography and biography, including authorship, self, time and memory, are used here to re-em…
The Normalization of 'Sensible' Recreational Drug Use
Five key dimensions of normalization are identified: availability/access; drug trying rates; usage rates; accommodating attitudes to 'sensible' recreational drug use especially by non users; and degree of cultural accommodation of illegal drug use. A review of recent UK research is provided for each measure. The NW England Longitudinal Study continues to monitor normalization based on the recapture of 465 young adults (in year 2000) of a cohort p…
Who needs enemies with friends like these? The importance of place for young people living in known gang areas
Despite a growing concern about gangs in Britain, academic research that focuses on gangs remains scarce. Drawing on data from the ESRC-funded ethnographic research YOGEC (Youth Gangs in an English City) project, this paper explores the negotiation of space and place by young people living in inner-city areas affected by gangs. Using a combination of fieldwork observations and focus group and interview data, this paper charts the experiences of n…
Coming Out”
Some personal experience of illicit drug use undoubtedly exists within the population of academic drug researchers. But it is rarely acknowledged, and even more rarely reflected upon, in their published work. This is understandable: criminal, professional and social sanctions may follow public admission of illicit activities. However, to not “come out” seems contrary to some core academic principles, such as transparency in data collection and re…
The Textual Disembodiment of Knowledge in Research Account Writing
Recent writers on autobiography and biography have questioned the extent to which the text represents a set of 'facts' about 'a life'. The following arguments question the extent to which the research account can be seen to represent a set of facts about the research process, in a simple and straightforward manner. Concepts problematized by writers on autobiography and biography, including authorship, self, time and memory, are used here to re-em…
Does online anonymity boost illegal market trading
Anonymity allows the online trade in illegal products and services on cryptomarkets to flourish in spite of being enacted in a public location. Bolstered by the extensive media coverage of the cryptomarket trade in drugs, fraud and weapons, these platforms may function as a kind of criminal ‘gateway’, and in so doing facilitate – or indeed amplify – criminality. I argue, however, that researchers must establish – not assume – that the criminality…
Hidden Behind the Gunfire
This article uses data from a 3-year multisite ethnographic research study of gangs within an English city, to explore the different ways that "gang culture" shapes the victimization experiences and everyday lives of (young) women. Victims of lethal gang violence in Research City are almost exclusively young men, rendering invisible the ways in which gangs have an impact on the lives of women living in neighborhoods with a gang presence. The arti…
The Textual Disembodiment of Knowledge in Research Account Writing
Recent writers on autobiography and biography have questioned the extent to which the text represents a set of 'facts' about 'a life'. The following arguments question the extent to which the research account can be seen to represent a set of facts about the research process, in a simple and straightforward manner. Concepts problematized by writers on autobiography and biography, including authorship, self, time and memory, are used here to re-em…
The Normalization of 'Sensible' Recreational Drug Use
Five key dimensions of normalization are identified: availability/access; drug trying rates; usage rates; accommodating attitudes to 'sensible' recreational drug use especially by non users; and degree of cultural accommodation of illegal drug use. A review of recent UK research is provided for each measure. The NW England Longitudinal Study continues to monitor normalization based on the recapture of 465 young adults (in year 2000) of a cohort p…
Who needs enemies with friends like these? The importance of place for young people living in known gang areas
Despite a growing concern about gangs in Britain, academic research that focuses on gangs remains scarce. Drawing on data from the ESRC-funded ethnographic research YOGEC (Youth Gangs in an English City) project, this paper explores the negotiation of space and place by young people living in inner-city areas affected by gangs. Using a combination of fieldwork observations and focus group and interview data, this paper charts the experiences of n…
Marriage, mortgage, motherhood
Blame the Parents? Challenges for Parent‐Focused Programmes for Families of Gang‐Involved Young People
Parent‐focused interventions are a potentially effective tool for preventing and reducing gang involvement, although the challenges of delivering such services are considerable. Drawing from data collected over 26 months for the ethnographic study, Youth Gangs in an English City, including interviews with parents of gang‐involved young people, we identify potential obstacles. These include: psychological barriers to the participation of parents r…
Changing Adolescence
Mentoring Siblings of Gang Members
Mentoring has become a popular model of intervention to reduce the risk of offending, and has been proposed as an effective tool to tackle the risk of gang membership. This paper reviews the existing literature on mentoring and reports on a qualitative evaluation of a mentoring programme targeted at young people ‘at risk’ of gang membership in an English city. The study highlights important issues around these interventions. Although we found it …
Hidden Behind the Gunfire
This article uses data from a 3-year multisite ethnographic research study of gangs within an English city, to explore the different ways that "gang culture" shapes the victimization experiences and everyday lives of (young) women. Victims of lethal gang violence in Research City are almost exclusively young men, rendering invisible the ways in which gangs have an impact on the lives of women living in neighborhoods with a gang presence. The arti…
Illegal Leisure Revisited
This book updates the progress into adulthood of the cohort of fourteen-year-olds who were recruited and tracked until they were eighteen years old. Illegal Leisure (1998) described their adolescent journeys and lifestyles, focusing on their early regular drinking and extensive ‘recreational’ drug use. This new edition revisits these original chapters, providing commentaries around them to discuss current implications of the original publication,…
A response to Dolliver's “Evaluating drug trafficking on the Tor Network
Hidden wholesale
The cryptomarket may function in part as a virtual broker, linking wholesalers with offline retail-level distributors. For drugs like ecstasy, these marketplaces may link vendors in producer countries directly with retail level suppliers. Wholesale activity on cryptomarkets may serve to increase the diffusion of new drugs - and wider range of drugs - in offline drug markets, thereby indirectly serving drug users who are not cryptomarket customers…
Going international? Risk taking by cryptomarket drug vendors
Everything you always wanted to know about drug cryptomarkets* (*but were afraid to ask)
An island apart? Risks and prices in the Australian cryptomarket drug trade
Delivery dilemmas
Silk Road participants neither viewed themselves as immune to, nor passively accepting of, the risk of detection and arrest. Rational choice theorists have viewed offending decisions as constrained by limited access to relevant information. Cryptomarkets as 'illicit capital' sharing communities provide expanded and low-cost access to information enabling drug market participants to make more accurate assessments of the risk of apprehension. The a…
The value of unsolicited online data in drug policy research
We alert readers to the value of using unsolicited online data in drug policy research by highlighting web-based content relevant to drug policy generated by distinct types of actor: people who consume, supply or produce illicit drugs, online news websites and state or civil society organisations. These actors leave 'digital traces' across a range of internet platforms, and these traces become available to researchers to use as data - although th…
Leveraging the value of online data and methods
Does online anonymity boost illegal market trading
Anonymity allows the online trade in illegal products and services on cryptomarkets to flourish in spite of being enacted in a public location. Bolstered by the extensive media coverage of the cryptomarket trade in drugs, fraud and weapons, these platforms may function as a kind of criminal ‘gateway’, and in so doing facilitate – or indeed amplify – criminality. I argue, however, that researchers must establish – not assume – that the criminality…
Research Handbook on International Drug Policy
Developments in encryption technology have facilitated new forms of digital drug trading. In this chapter, we provide an overview of cryptomarkets and the technologies that underpin them. Our examination of the history of cryptomarket development shows they have evolved in response to enforcement operations and threats from within the community, yet policy responses, whilst increasingly varied and sophisticated, remain in line with prohibition an…
Gendering research on online illegal drug markets
This paper reviews and critiques research on online illegal drug markets, arguing that existing conceptualizations and methodological approaches have resulted in a very limited discussion of women and questions of gender. The first part lays out the stereotypes and unarticulated assumptions that enable questions about women and gender to be side-lined, as follows: (i) that online anonymity rules out knowing about gender in online drug markets; (i…
No magic pocket
Coming Out”
Some personal experience of illicit drug use undoubtedly exists within the population of academic drug researchers. But it is rarely acknowledged, and even more rarely reflected upon, in their published work. This is understandable: criminal, professional and social sanctions may follow public admission of illicit activities. However, to not “come out” seems contrary to some core academic principles, such as transparency in data collection and re…
The relationship between cryptomarket drug purchase, social networks and adverse drug events
People who reported purchasing drugs from cryptomarkets more commonly reported having no drug-using network, and cryptomarket purchase was associated with reported adverse events. Our results support the notion that cryptomarket use increases drug-related harm, but further disentanglement of multiple complex mechanisms is needed in future research
Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Business (11 works) · Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies (11 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Criminology (8 works) · Drug (7 works)