Word: inner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...educated youths. The handful of jobs that are open -- flipping burgers, packing groceries -- pay only minimum wages or "chump change," in the street vernacular. So these youngsters turn to the most lucrative option they can find. In rapidly growing numbers, they are becoming the new criminal recruits of the inner city, the children who deal crack...
Teenagers have come to dominate all aspects of the crack business. "They are being used to process, package, cut and distribute, to sell and even to enforce discipline in the ranks," says Roy Hayes, U.S. Attorney for the eastern district of Michigan. Those familiar with the inner-city drug trade have never seen anything like it. "I grew up here," says Sergeant Tom Hughes of the Wayne County probate court, which includes Detroit. "There were drugs in our neighborhood. But they were heroin dealers. They didn't mess with children. That was the difference...
...hardly surprising that much of the violence in the inner city is crack fueled. Dealers too young to boast a driver's license have ready access to state-of-the-art firearms: Uzi submachine guns, .357 Magnums and MAC 10s. "You don't see Saturday-night specials anymore," says New York Deputy Police Chief Raymond Kelly. "It's a thing of the past." Adolescent gunmen have itchier trigger fingers. Gang shootouts caused 387 deaths in Los Angeles last year; more than half the victims were innocent bystanders. "You put a gun in kids' hands, and they are more dangerous than...
With so much drug-related horror in the inner cities, it is easy to assume that crack is an exclusively underclass problem. Not so. "I see Key Club members and honor-society members destroyed by crack," says Jeanne Howard of the state attorney's office in Palm Beach County, Fla. There is a terrible symbiosis between the wealthy addicts and the inner-city dealers. Privileged kids who venture into the ghetto to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on crack are largely responsible for the booming drug business...
...education: total spending on public schools in California has declined from 4.9% of personal income in 1978 to 3.4% today, while enrollment has climbed rapidly. Reading scores among high school seniors in California have declined annually since 1975, particularly in the inner-city schools that supply recruits for gangs like Los Angeles' Crips. In higher education, federal aid to college students -- grants, work-study jobs, student loans -- dropped 16% from 1980 to 1987, while the cost of college has nearly doubled. The number of blacks in college declined by 26,000 between 1980 and 1986, reversing a steady increase...