helping a guy who used to sell drugs in new york

[stevehein]

i have been trying to help this guy i met here in uruguay. he sold drugs here and in ny when he was just a teenager.

i am feeling kind of discouraged about how it is going.

anyhow i searched for ex drug dealers and found this article...

http://www.standard.co.uk/business/marke...05245.html

some pple say that pple cant change. i think i see my friend changing and i think i have changed a lot and it looks like the guy in this article changed....

so anyhow, just wanted to post that. hello to everyone i havent talked to in a while.

[SoulRiser]

Yeah, people change all the time. Changing is natural, resisting it is unnatural (and probably unhealthy). So is he finding it hard to get a job there?

[Cianna200]

Change can be difficult, I bet everyone can agree on that.
So what is going on now?

[Sunbourn]

Does he have a record?

Turning his life around will be much more difficult having been branded with a criminal record, although it may not be as bad in Uruguay as it is here in the US.

It sounds like he wasn't really that much of a bad guy to begin with. Drug dealers are unfairly demonized when the extent of their crime is taking part in a consensual transaction. It shows that he has an entrepreneurial mindset which may be advantageous to him in business.

[brainiac3397]

Not all drug dealers are entraprenurial skilled. Drug dealing can also be a job of desperation.

[Sunbourn]

(09-23-2015 09:20 AM)brainiac3397 Wrote:  Not all drug dealers are entraprenurial skilled. Drug dealing can also be a job of desperation.

It often is a job of desperation, which is why it's asinine to make life so difficult for ex-offenders. Collateral consequences are a huge burden on ex-offenders, and increases the likelihood of them becoming a further burden on to society through recidivism.

[brainiac3397]

(09-23-2015 10:54 AM)|55555| Wrote:  

(09-23-2015 09:20 AM)brainiac3397 Wrote:  Not all drug dealers are entraprenurial skilled. Drug dealing can also be a job of desperation.

It often is a job of desperation, which is why it's asinine to make life so difficult for ex-offenders. Collateral consequences are a huge burden on ex-offenders, and increases the likelihood of them becoming a further burden on to society through recidivism.

Yep. Few people go into the drug business to get rich. Many are just worried about getting enough to survive since there really isn't much of an alternative for them.

Reminds me of Les Miserable. Dude steals a loaf of bread from hunger and desperation, and the entire book he's haunted by the fact he's now considered a criminal for life even if he served his sentence.

Perhaps this is something predominant in the West? I know that people in Turkey aren't very discriminatory against folk who've gone to jail(ironically, there can be those who are considered popular anti-heros after going to jail. Erdogan for example was thrown in prison). As long as it isn't something terribly heinous(like rape or sexual assault or anything involving kids and stuff) even murder might slide among many depending on the circumstance(since the idea is that if he went to jail, he paid for his misdeed).

And generally prison isn't as terrible there since they have it communally set up. Might be a bit of a dent to one's pride since the new guy in the "cell/dorm" gets a bunch of shitty duties like cleaning and making tea and there's usually a "boss" of the cell(though in modern times, such notions have somewhat declined).

Things will be quite different if you run into crazies though(either cellmates or guards, or worse...both). You could also be like the PKK leader who was caught like a decade ago and has been practically jailed alone in an entire prison built on an island(I think there's like 8 inmates despite the fact the prison is capable of accomdating in the hundreds).

So bottomline here is: America never forgives criminals.