Explaining the Problem

Our neighborhood is on the north side of Wilmington, Delaware. Most of our group lives in the Riverside Housing Project.

At our first meeting for Project Citizen, we talked about different problems in the neighborhood. Everyone agreed that violence, drugs and AIDS were problems. We decided to look at drugs. The group interviewed seventeen people in the community. We interviewed parents, other young people, political leaders and business people. Some of the comments were:

"Drug abuse is a serious problem in this community. It increases crime and it has a negative impact on families. We have minimum mandatory laws which cause you to go to jail if you're caught selling drugs. (This is) not a good idea, sends too many people to jail. We need drug paraphernalia laws and more treatment"

"(Drugs) kill and hurt a lot of people. Other people live in fear when police are chasing drug dealer through the neighborhood"

"Violence locally, regionally, nationally is destroying our world, especially our youth and young people. (Our policy today is) harsher punishment for violent crimes and to decrease the need and urge for drug use."

"They just start locking people up because they are standing on corners, not being where they live".

"We have so many young people in our community on drugs. (We need) more police officers."

Our group feels that the problem is serious and has spread throughout the nation. We think the government should do something because the whole purpose of government is to protect the people. Most people we talked to thought that present law is not adequate.

There are disagreements about what to do. Present law says you can't do drugs and they lock you up if you do. They focus on the drug dealers, but the dealers are not on the corners anymore. Innocent people get targeted because they are out there in the neighborhood. Putting people in jail doesn't solve the problem. They just come back to do the same thing. Other people are there to pick up the business while they are in jail.

Some people in the community think it is the cops' problem. As long as it's not affecting their family, it's not a problem. Some people think it's cute to hang around drug people. Many people didn't know about treatment programs or don't trust them.

We think the people responsible for dealing with this problem are the police, the community, the Mayor and State Government law makers.
 

Graphical Presentations of the Problem

Click here to see a newspaper article describing the problem.

After talking about our interviews, the group decided to look at the sale of things that could be used for drug use (drug paraphernalia) in our neighborhood stores. Click here to see a chart showing what we found in eleven stores.

Back to the home page