Can an Efficacious Strategy for Curtailing Illegal Drug Sales Be Counted on to Reduce Violent Crime?

• Published date: 01 August 2017
• Author: Shani A. L. Buggs,Daniel W. Webster
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12326
• Date: 01 August 2017

POLICY ESSAY

DRUG MARKET INTERVENTION

Can an Efficacious Strategy for Curtailing

Illegal Drug Sales Be Counted on to Reduce

Violent Crime?

Daniel W. Webster

Shani A. L. Buggs

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

In many cities, the illicit drug trade plays a significant role in generating other types

of crimes, especially violent crimes involving guns (Goldstein, Brownstein, Ryan, and

Bellucci, 1997; Levitt and Venkatesh, 2000; Ousey and Lee, 2004). Thus, it is no

surprise that law enforcement agencies have applied significant resources toward drug law

enforcement directed at disrupting illicit drug markets or otherwise at incarcerating those

involved in the drug trade. Drug law enforcement policies and practices, however, have

been controversial as a result of concerns about high levels of incarceration attributable to

drug law violations and racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system relevant to

drug offenses (Alexander, 2010; Carson and Golinelli, 2013). Although declining in recent

years, drug law violations are consistently the most frequent type of crime that leads to an

arrest (U.S. Department of Justice, 2016).

Given the perceived importance of the illicit drug market to crime and the law enforce-

ment and criminal justice resources directed at the problem, a relative dearth of rigorous

research has been aimed at examining the impact of various approaches to combatting

illegal drug sales. What research has been done has resulted in little evidence indicating

that traditional drug law enforcement tactics such as buy and busts, sweeps of open-air

drug markets, raids of stash houses, and prosecutions of drug-selling groups on criminal

conspiracy charges reduce violent crime. Indeed, such efforts commonly increase violent

crime (Mazerolle, Soole, and Rombouts, 2006; Werbet al., 2011). Even models that involve

targeting of hot spots for crime and complementary community efforts do not tend to lead

to significant reductions in violent crime (Mazerolle et al., 2006). The forces driving the

demand and the supply of illegal drugs seem to be robust to the application of tough laws,

Direct correspondence to Daniel W. Webster, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 N.

Broadway, Room 593, Baltimore, MD 21205-1996 (e-mail: dwebster@jhu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12326 C2017 American Society of Criminology 821

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 16 rIssue 3