Investigating the Connections Between Race, Illicit Drug Markets, and Lethal Violence, 1984-1997

Abstract

Many scholars have speculated that the dramatic rise of homicide rates in the late 1980s and their subsequent decline in the 1990s was driven by the expansion and contraction of illegal drug markets and/or law enforcement attempts to regulate these markets. However, the empirical evidence to this end is limited in important ways. This analysis extends prior research and provides evidence of the following: (1) Change in drug market indicators are positively associated with change in both Black and White homicide rates in large U.S. cities between 1984 and 1997. (2) This relationship is substantially stronger for Blacks than for Whites. (3) The socioeconomic moderators of the drug-market/violence link vary by race, with racial inequality being especially important for Blacks and resource deprivation being especially important for Whites. The main implications of the analysis are that the drug-market/ lethal violence connection is much more complex than previously thought, and that simplistic theoretical accounts of the drug market-violence nexus need additional development.