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Crime Causation - Pablo Escobar

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Write about former drug lord Pablo Escobar. Describe his criminal activities and any background information you know or can find out about him. In general terms, discuss how the various theoretical schools of crime causation would attempt to explain his criminal behavior.

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Using former drug lord Pablo Escobar as an illustrative example, this solution describes his criminal activities and other personal information. It then discusses how the various theoretical schools of crime causation would attempts to explain his criminal behavior.

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Hi,

One approach to help you with an assignment of this type is to provide information from various sources, which you can the draw on for your final copy. I also provided several excerpt for further detail and consideration throughout the response, and links for further research. Like all academic papers you will include an Introduction, Body (e.g., criminal activity, joined Columbian Liberal Party, arrested and escaped, hunted down and killed; crime causation ) and Conclusion (e.g. tie up main points).

Let's look closer at each section.

1. Write about former drug lord Pablo Escobar. Describe his criminal activities and any background information you know or can find out about him. In general terms, discuss how the various theoretical schools of crime causation would attempt to explain his criminal behavior.

Pablo Emilio Escobar (a.k.a. El Patrón or El Doctor) (December 1, 1949 - December 2, 1993) gained world recognition as a Colombian drug dealer. He was considered to be one of the most ambitious and powerful drug dealers in history. Pablo was indeed a character to be reckoned with. His brutal ruthlessness was also legendary: he would kill anyone who stood in his way and was responsible for the killing of 30 judges, 457 policemen, and other deaths at a rate of 20 each day for two months.[2] Escobar became so wealthy from the drug trade that in 1989 Forbes magazine listed him as the seventh richest man in the world,[1] with the Medellín cartel taking in up to $30 billion annually and controlled 80 percent of the global cocaine market. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar). The purpose of this paper is to.... (write purpose). Specifically, it look at... (explain what you plan to include in the paper and in what order).

Criminal Activities

Pablo Escobar began his criminal life early. When still in school, for example, he began stealing tombstones and selling them to smugglers from Panama. He also allegedly stole headstones from graveyards and sold them in other villages of the department of Antioquia (this allegation has never been proven). It is also reported that when he was a teenager he began to steal cars from the streets of Medellín and was involved in other criminal rackets, and eventually moved into the cocaine business. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar

During the 1970s, Escobar began building an enormous drug empire during the 1970s, later known as the Medellín Cartel. He gained a reputation grew after he murdered a well known Medellín drug dealer named Fabio Restrepo following a drug deal of 14 kilograms of cocaine, and Restrepo's men were informed that they were to work for Escobar. In 1976, Escobar and several of his men were arrested after returning from a drug run to Ecuador. While the case against Escobar was being made, he tried to bribe the judge but was unsuccessful. After many months of legal wrangling, Escobar had the two arresting officers killed and the case was dropped. So began his pattern of dealing with the authorities by either bribing them or killing them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar

See personal life section at the end of this response.

During the 1980s, Escobar became known internationally as his drug network gained notoriety; El Cartel de Medellín controlled a large portion of the drugs that entered into the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic with cocaine brought mostly from Peru and Bolivia, as Colombian coca was initially of substandard quality. Escobar's product reached many other nations, mostly around the Americas, although it is said that his network reached as far as Asia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar

An undercover police officer in Texas (2008) was interviewed by ABC News about his recollection of Escobar's criminal activity: "I was an agent in Austin, Texas doing a lot of undercover buys, working a lot of heroine cases. So when I get to Colombia, my boss says you're going to work on Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel. And I was like "who is Pablo Escobar," said DEA Special Agent Javier Pena." (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/national_world&id=5961493).

INTERVIEW (DEA Agent Pena )

This is Pablo Escobar, from one of his first arrests when he specialized in stealing cars and tombstones.
In the seventies he would work for local drug dealers as an enforcer and courier.

But, Escobar had bigger ambitions and ended up using murder and pay-offs as a way of putting rivals out of business, until the eighties when he became the country's king of cocaine.

"It was a very complex drug distribution organization which relied heavily on terrorism, on killing people, on blowing up innocent women and children," said Pena.

It became known as the "Medellin Cartel," and it smuggled tons of cocaine into the U.S. At his peak, Escobar was worth an estimated $4 billion dollars -- enough to crack the Forbes list of the world's ten richest men.

The drug lord used kidnappings, bombings and assassination to get police off his back. His victims are believed to include hundreds of police officers and dozens of judges and prosecutors. He's also blamed for the 1989 murder of popular presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan -- that's when he stepped over the line.
"So the war was on. We started extraditing lots of traffickers," said Pena.

When Colombia began extraditing his colleagues, Escobar declared war, using bombings and kidnappings to intimidate government officials.

Colombia responded by asking for training and intelligence help from the Pentagon and the Justice Department. Pena was the DEA's liaison to a hand-picked national police squad called the "Search Bloc."

It was a dangerous duty, because one of Escobar's great fears was being extradited to the U.S. In fact, he offered to turn himself in to Colombian police on two conditions: one, no extradition, and two he would be housed in a prison of his own design and construction. The government said okay, and Escobar moved in to a prison he named "La Catedral."
"They had their luxurious apartments, they had the best televisions, I remember these giant refrigerators, he had built his own soccer field," said Pena.

But, eventually Escobar's actions came back to haunt him. Former cohorts formed a vigilante group called Los Pepes and began killing dozens of his associates.

Some critics charge they had help from the government.

Fearing Los Pepes would try to get to him, Escobar escaped his prison and began a 16-month game of hide and seek that ended in late 1993 when the search bloc tracked him to this apartment building. A day after his 44th birthday, they killed him in an exchange of gunfire.

Some Colombians were relieved, others were outraged. Colombia-born human rights attorney Roxanna Altholz says that's not hard to understand.

"It is important to recognize that for certain neighborhoods in Medellin, Pablo Escobar was a policeman, he was the judge, he was the executioner, he was the bank, he was a social service provider," said human rights attorney Roxanna Altholz.
Critics believe the government was so determined to get Escobar that it committed or at least tolerated torture and human rights abuses to get information on his whereabouts.

"Pablo's rise to power is a story about the weakness of the Colombian government," said Altholz.
Altholz believes those abuses persist today in the civil war between the government and left wing guerillas.
And the smuggling of cocaine into the U.S. continues today though there is no longer any trafficker with Escobar's stature.
Still, DEA Agent Pena says the effort to win the war on drugs continues as well.

"These people rise up, they'll get the power, they'll get the money, but sooner or later someone is coming to knock on your door," said Pena. (Copyright ©2008 KGO-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.) (Excerpted from http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/national_world&id=5961493).

Escobar Joined the Columbian ...

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