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Targeting the Local: Policing Clandestine Methamphetamine Production in a Rural US Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

William Garriott
William Garriott
Affiliation:
Department of Justice Studies, Moody 218 MSC 1205, James Madison University, 800 S Main Street, Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA,[email protected]
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Abstract

In the United States, state-based efforts to curtail the spread of methamphetamine (“meth”) have targeted domestic producers through heightened regulation of precursor chemicals used in the clandestine meth-production process. This article examines the impact of these efforts on the exercise of police power in a rural community affected by methamphetamine. As the author shows, the targeting of local meth production has incorporated residents of rural communities into the policing process by variously encouraging and requiring them to adopt a new way of perceiving the local landscape, centred around methamphetamine. Under the new legislation, previously benign objects such as cold medicine, batteries, and drain cleaner have been re-signified as objects with criminal potential that residents of rural communities are called upon to police. This has led to the expansion of police power within and beyond the formal domains of law enforcement. Through the targeting of local production, civic volunteers, pharmacists, retail clerks, natural resource officers, and others have been drawn into the policing of the meth problem. This reveals a key dynamic in the localization of police power: as police power is localized, the local is reimagined in terms of police power.

Résumé

Aux États-Unis, les efforts étatiques qui visent à freiner la propagation des méthamphétamines ont ciblé les producteurs domestiques par la réglementation des produits chimiques utilisés dans le processus de production clandestine de la meth. Cet article examine l'impact de ces mesures sur l'exercice du pouvoir policier dans le contexte d'une communauté rurale affectée par les méthamphétamines. L'auteur démontre comment les opérations qui ciblent la production locale de la meth ont incorporé les résidants des communautés rurales dans le processus policier en les encourageant à adopter une nouvelle façon de percevoir l'univers des méthamphétamines, ou en nécessitant d'eux une telle adoption. Selon les nouvelles réglementations, les objets qui étaient autrefois bénins, tels que les médicaments contre le rhume ou la grippe, les batteries et les nettoyeurs de tuyaux de drainage, sont redéfinis comme des objets potentiellement criminels et la police fait désormais appel à la coopération des résidants des communautés rurales pour contrôler ces substances. Ceci mène à l'expansion du pouvoir policier à l'intérieur et à l'extérieur des domaines formels de l'application de la loi. En ciblant la production locale, les bénévoles civiques, les pharmaciens, les commis de magasin, les agents des ressources naturelles ainsi que d'autres individus sont maintenant impliqués dans la lutte contre les méthamphétamines. Ceci révèle une dynamique importante dans la localisation du pouvoir policier: tandis que le pouvoir policier est localisé, les éléments locaux sont réimaginés en fonction du pouvoir policier.

Keywords

policedrugsmethamphetaminecrimeUnited StatesethnographypolicedroguesméthamphétaminecrimeÉtats-Unisethnographie
Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , April 2010 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2010

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References

1 UN Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report (Vienna: United Nations, 2008), 5Google Scholar.

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6 It should be noted, however, that since this type of legislation began going into effect, the number of meth-lab incidents in the United States has dropped from 17,356 in 2004 to 6,783 in 2008. See Drug Enforcement Agency [DEA], Maps of Methamphetamine Lab Incidents (1999–2008)Google Scholar, http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/map_lab_seizures.html; for discussion see Weisheit, “Making Methamphetamine.”

7 Of course, law enforcement is only one mode of the police power of the state. Thus, as I discuss it here, what is expanding is this particular mode of the police power, not the police power per se.

8 All names of people and places have been changed to protect the anonymity of those involved in my research.

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11 It should be noted that this approach to the policing of methamphetamine is not simply the product of regulatory decisions. The specific materiality of methamphetamine is at the heart of the process as well. Indeed, the expanded field of police practice I document here would not have unfolded in quite the same way were it not for the fact that meth can be produced through everyday, licit commodities available for other purposes.

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15 As I use the term, “local” refers both to the physical locale (in this case, Baker County) and to the social relations situated within it, particularly those so-called everyday or ordinary social relations. Juridical constructions of the local in terms of jurisdiction are part of this as well. See, for example, Varenne, H., Americans Together: Structured Diversity in an American Town (New York: Teachers College Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Geertz, C., Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 2000)Google Scholar; Das, V., Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)Google Scholar. No categorical distinction between state personnel / state power and “the local” should be assumed; Any such distinctions are themselves an effect of power relations. See Mitchell, T., “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics,” American Political Science Review 85, 1 (1991), 77–96Google Scholar.

16 Here I draw on Hagan and Levi's reading of Bourdieu. See Hagan, J. and Levi, R., “Crimes of War and the Force of Law,” Social Forces 83, 4 (2005), 1499–534CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Ibid., 1502–3.

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19 For more information on the Meth Watch program see http://www.methwatch.com/index.aspx.

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