NORQUIST LAUNCHES ATTACK AGAINST DRUG 'BUSINESS' STUDY

Mayor calls report comparing drug dealers, entrepreneurs an insult

Mayor John Norquist Monday blasted a report that compares drug dealers to
innovative entrepreneurs, suggesting that the report's conclusions are the
kind you'd expect from "drug-addled minds."

"The Business of Drug Dealing in Milwaukee," a report prepared for the
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute by a University of Illinois-Chicago
assistant professor, is an "insult" to law-abiding Milwaukeeans, Norquist
says.

It also is a "celebration of criminality," according to Norquist, that was
poorly researched and "overwhelmingly biased."

The report, assembled by John Hagedorn, concluded that "much of what we
call 'crime,' is actually work." And it states that "most drug
entrepreneurs aren't particularly violent."

The conclusions were based on surveys and interviews with drug dealers in
two Milwaukee neighborhoods -- one largely Latino, the other mostly
African-American -- that Hagedorn dubbed "Horatiotown and Algerville."

Hagedorn's data were collected by former gang members who worked with him
on previous research and who contacted friends and former associates in the
neighborhoods and paid them for information, the report says.

No tapes of interviews were made, no names were kept and no identifiers
were left on the interview questionnaires.

Norquist challenged both the conclusions and the methodology in a letter
sent Monday to Michael Joyce, head of the Lynde and Harry Bradley
Foundation, which helps fund the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

The "twisted preconception" that drug dealing is somehow a Horatio Alger
story, Norquist said in the letter, makes the report "farcical. True
Horatio Alder stories always conclude that hard work and virtue are
rewarded. Drug dealing is never virtuous."

When criminal informants are paid to gather information but virtually no
records are kept, Norquist said, who can vouch for the data?

"The conclusions reached by the author are what one would expect from
drug-addled minds, not from an institution that purports to advance policy
discussions," the letter says.

Much of Norquist's letter to Joyce is a recitation of the evils and
pitfalls of drugs, including lost lives, ruined families, cocaine babies
and the spread of AIDS.

Joyce said Monday that he had never heard of the report and was surprised
to receive Norquist's letter.

Institute President James Miller said that while his organization receives
money from the Bradley Foundation, none of it was specifically funneled
into Hagedorn's report.

Miller says he doesn't necessarily agree with Hagedorn's recommendations
and that "no one is saying that criminal activity is something that should
be condoned," but he defends both the author and the methodology.

"We knew from the beginning how he (Hagedorn) was going to do this," Miller
said. "He spent an awful long time over the last several years and seven
figures doing the research, so one presumes he is capable of doing it. This
is not like we got somebody who was interning for the mayor to do it or
someone just released from prison."

Hagedorn himself responded to Norquist's criticisms by saying he expected
to be called soft on crime.

"We have different jobs," he said, speaking of the difference between
researchers and politicians.

Politicians often have "simple answers: if there's crime, let's eradicate
it, jail them," Hagedorn said. "My job as a social scientist is more
complicated than the simple answer."

The methodology -- including using former gang members, paying drug dealers
who participated and guaranteeing anonymity -- is "very, very standard,"
said Robert Bursik, editor of Criminology, a leading academic journal.

Bursik, professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis,
said in a phone interview that anonymity is required by federal privacy
guidelines.

"The purpose sometimes of doing research," Miller said, "is to cause
debate, and I guess that's what we're doing."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski