Regardless of anything I can't bring myself to place my trust in people who associate with criminals. Your ideas, the strategies you consider acceptable, are defined by the ideas and strategies to which you are exposed. Even an anthropologist of criminals is thus part criminal.
It also compromises the judgment. Imagine, for instance, being exposed to so much drug induced psychosis that you think drugs are the ONLY explanation for psychosis and accordingly destroy a schizophrenic's life. This was actually done to me. Fuck criminals and their kith.