by JESSIE ROMERO – Econ Focus Third Quarter 2013, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Charles Myres started dealing drugs when he was 11 years old. He was arrested for the first time when he was 15 and was in and out of court for the next four years. I n many cities, he would be a statistic today, one of the nearly 800,000 black men who are currently in prison or jail. But instead, Myres — a tall, slim 23-year-old who wears his hair in neat braids — has started a landscaping business with his brother and is raising three children with his girlfriend.
Myres happened to be a drug dealer in High Point, N.C.,a city of about 100,000 people between Greensboro and Winston-Salem. In 2004, fed up with decades of high crime and drug violence, the police embarked on a new strategy to combat the city’s open-air drug markets: Instead of locking up all the dealers, they would offer some a second chance.
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source: http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2013/q3/pdf/feature2.pdf
