Taxing Times: Inter-criminal victimisation and drug robbery amongst the English professional criminal milieu

This article considers the oft hidden instances of inter-criminal victimisation in illegal drug markets amongst serious criminals in the North of England. Focusing on proto-criminal activity known in regional argot as ‘taxing’ (drug dealers robbing one another) it draws on ethnographic material and suggests that contrast to literature on the subject from the USA (Contreras 2012; Jacobs 2000) ‘taxing’ in England rarely leads to cycles of retaliatory violence. Yet against a more general climate of precariousness in disadvantaged communities in England, ‘taxing’ as a deviant behaviour is a gainful, relatively low risk activity for a minority of established, professional violent criminals.