On the Resilience of Illegal Drug Markets

This paper argues that the concept of resilience is a fruitful way of understanding the impact of repressive policies on illegal drug markets. For the purpose of this article, resilience is defined as the ability of market participants to preserve the existing levels of exchanges between buyers and sellers, despite external pressure aimed at disrupting the trade. The first part of the paper highlights how some of the core features of illegal drug markets, a decentralized structure and high prices, contribute to increasing their resilience to attacks. The second part develops a framework that can be used to compare markets on the basis of their resilient properties. Some of the empirical and policy implications of the framework are discussed in the conclusion.     

Illegal Dealings: The Impact of Low-Level Police Enforcement on Drug Markets

This article examines the impact of low-level police enforcement on two British drug markets, and the adaptations to enforcement made by sellers and buyers. The two markets took very different forms. One was tightly controlled by a small number of middle-level dealers, and highly structured. The structure and control worked effectively to minimise risks posed by law enforcement. The other market was very loosely structured, with little control exercised on retail sellers by middle-level dealers. This lack of organisation posed different sets of problems for law enforcement. The article examines the potential for developing the role of police sources (informants) in disrupting drug markets of both sorts. It also argues the need for provision in parallel of local treatment facilities for drug users.     

Police Officers on Drug Corners in Philadelphia,Drug Crime,and Violent Crime: Intended,Diffusion, and Displacement Impacts

On May 1, 2002, the Philadelphia Police Department launched Operation Safe Streets, stationing officers at 214 of the highest drug activity locations in the city 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Interrupted time series (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) models on weekly data isolated citywide and local program impacts on all violent crimes, murder, and reported drug crimes. Results showed no significant impacts on citywide weekly counts for drug crimes, homicides, or all violent crimes. Geographically focused analyses showed significant localized intervention impacts for both violent and drug crimes. Analyses of high‐drug‐activity non‐intervention sites suggest: the program impacts seen were not an artifact of history or local history; significant spatial diffusion of preventive benefits for violent crime; and probably significant spatial displacement for drug crime. Stationary targeted drug‐enforcement interventions like Operation Safe Streets may differentially affect the locational selection processes behind violent crime versus drug crime.     

DOES CRIME JUST MOVE AROUND THE CORNER? A CONTROLLED STUDY OF SPATIAL DISPLACEMENT AND DIFFUSION OF CRIME CONTROL BENEFITS*

Recent studies point to the potential theoretical and practical benefits of focusing police resources on crime hot spots. However, many scholars have noted that such approaches risk displacing crime or disorder to other places where programs are not in place. Although much attention has been paid to the idea of displacement, methodological problems associated with measuring it have often been overlooked. We try to fill these gaps in measurement and understanding of displacement and the related phenomenon of diffusion of crime control benefits. Our main focus is on immediate spatial displacement or diffusion of crime to areas near the targeted sites of an intervention. Do focused crime prevention efforts at places simply result in a movement of offenders to areas nearby targeted sites—“do they simply move crime around the corner”? Or, conversely, will a crime prevention effort focusing on specific places lead to improvement in areas nearby—what has come to be termed a diffusion of crime control benefits? Our data are drawn from a controlled study of displacement and diffusion in Jersey City, New Jersey. Two sites with substantial street‐level crime and disorder were targeted and carefully monitored during an experimental period. Two neighboring areas were selected as “catchment areas” from which to assess immediate spatial displacement or diffusion. Intensive police interventions were applied to each target site but not to the catchment areas. More than 6,000 20‐minute social observations were conducted in the target and catchment areas. They were supplemented by interviews and ethnographic field observations. Our findings indicate that, at least for crime markets involving drugs and prostitution, crime does not simply move around the corner. Indeed, this study supports the position that the most likely outcome of such focused crime prevention efforts is a diffusion of crime control benefits to nearby areas.     

A Time-Series Analysis of Terrorism: Intervention,Displacement, and Diffusion of Benefits

This paper discusses the perception that displacement in terrorism is inevitable; that antiterrorism efforts merely relocate terrorism in some way. Using quarterly time-series data from the Global Terrorism Database (1994–2013) and the vector autoregression framework, we test the following hypothesis: the target-hardening efforts within the United States (US) after September, 11, 2001 reduce attacks on domestic US targets, but increase attacks on US targets abroad. To provide a more comprehensive test, we also provide dynamic impact factors and variance decompositions. The results of this intervention analysis show no support for displacement, and instead provide support for a diffusion-of benefits hypothesis. We also discuss how criminological and especially crime-prevention knowledge can guide and encompass the study of terrorism.     

The Architecture of Drug Trafficking: Network Forms of Organisation in the Colombian Cocaine Trade

For much of the past twenty-five years, the US-led war on drugs has been premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of Colombian drug trade. Instead of being run by a handful of massive, price-fixing ‘cartels’, the Colombian drug trade, then and now, was characterized by a fluid social system where flexible exchange networks expanded and retracted according to market opportunities and regulatory constraints. To support this interpretation, I draw on primary and secondary source data I collected in Colombia and the US, including interviews with several dozen hard-to-reach informants. I analyze these data to analyze the organisational form and functioning of ‘Colombian’ trafficking networks, focusing on how these illicit enterprises communicate, coordinate their activities, and make decisions, with an eye towards deflating some of the more persistent myths that have grown up around these transnational enterprises.     

祖国大陆与我国香港地区毒品犯罪比较

毒品犯罪是全球性的问题,引起了全世界的关注。如何减少和预防毒品犯罪,各国和地区都在作不懈努力。从香港地区毒品犯罪的历史发展,比较香港和大陆地区在持有毒品犯罪,走私、贩卖、运输、制造毒品罪,毒品原植物犯罪,非法提供麻醉品、精神药品罪等犯罪上的不同,及香港毒品犯罪的综合治疗措施的差异,有助于大陆和香港地区在求同存异的基础上加大司法领域的合作,共同应付毒品犯罪。     

Revolving Roles in Drug-Related Crime: The Cost of Chronic Drug Users as Victims and Perpetrators

Numerous studies have established a strong connection between the use of illicit drugs and the commission of other illegal activities, including both predatory and property crimes. No study, however, has examined the cost of crimes associated with drug users both as victims and as perpetrators. In the present study, recent data were analyzed from a targeted sample of chronic drug users (CDUs) and a matched sample of non-drug users (NDUs) in Miami-Dade County, Florida, to estimate the incremental cost of crime associated with CDU. Two separate models were employed to estimate (1) the probability of being a victim or a perpetrator of crime and (2) the cost of crime for both situations. The cost measures were transformed to reduce the influence of extreme outliers, and a smearing technique was used to compare the cost of crime for CDUs relative to NDUs. The findings illustrate that criminal activity among CDUs is circular, extensive, and costly. Implications for law enforcement, criminal justice policy, and substance abuse treatment are discussed.