The proposed project is focused on broad-range goals of expanding knowledge on the effects of multiple disadvantage upon individual outcomes of deviance, including substance abuse and criminal offending in impoverished urban communities. An integral part of this broad-range goal is to conduct research in these areas, especially effects on minority women who are an under-represented population in research. This proposed project links broad-range goals to specific aims through qualitative research methods that enable the researcher to reach a difficult-to-engage population. Specifically, the project will return the applicant to known research territory to build upon past qualitative fieldwork on this same population. Building upon a base of previous work, this project will use interviews to establish baselines for onset of drug use and entry into prostitution, and to look for relationships between the two trajectories. Though not generalizable to the universe of drug users, study results will provide an opportunity to study drug abuse trajectories among a highly specialized group of drug users in one particular setting. This study will provide an opportunity to identify unanticipated influences and phenomena, and to generate new grounded theories that add to the existing knowledge and provide new theories for testing. In addition, it can uncover processes involved in a police intervention that influence drug and career trajectories of this population. This project can study the efficacy of law enforcement strategies and suggest alternatives that promote law- abiding behavior without causing harm.
