Street-level Drug Research Articles

Drug market risk environment and navigational strategies of street-level dealers in Nigeria

Background Researchers have investigated drug market risks and navigational strategies of drug dealers in western societies. Less is known about this phenomenon in Africa. This study explores drug market risk environment and navigational strategies of street drug dealers in Nigeria. Methods The study uses qualitative data from in-depth interviews with street-level dealers (n = 31) recruited through snowball sampling in Uyo, Nigeria. Thematic analysis of transcripts generated three major themes (‘policing,’ ‘rivalry’ and ‘indiscretion’) as risk factors for police harassment, arrest and violence. Results Accounts identified policing, rivalry between drug dealers and indiscretion (e.g., exchanging drugs for potentially stolen items) as risk factors for police harassments, arrest and violence. Drug dealers navigate risks in different ways, including through bribing police officers, using police proxies in partisan negotiation of drug market conflicts, and non-exchange of drugs for potentially stolen items. Conclusion The findings underscore an ecological view of drug market risks where factors operating at different levels interact to shape risks, with policing featuring as an overarching macro-level risk factor. The failure of law enforcement to absolutely deter drug selling due to dealer’s navigational strategies such as informal privatization of police, indicates a need for alternative approaches to controlling street-level drug markets.

Technologies of abjection: The possessive logics and performative sovereignty of drug dog operations in New South Wales, Australia

This article considers the alarming escalation in the use of strip-searching on the part of the New South Wales police over the past decade and its connection with street-level drug policing including drug dog operations. These strategies mobilise a technology of detection which draws police ever more intently into the orbit of the sexual and sexual violation and in ever-closer proximity to the genital, the vaginal and the anal cavities of those it forcibly produces as suspects. I am especially interested in the symbolic, spectacular, gendered and performative dimensions of these ‘devices of sexual saturation’; their opportunistic deployment to patrol minoritarian populations (Aboriginal people, young people/minors, sexual and racial minorities) and cast aspersions on their self-sovereign capacities. Framed by the law as technologies of drug detection, these operations are better conceptualised as technologies of abjection devoted to the production of violable subjects as part of brutal ongoing efforts to shore up the authority of self-asserted, stolen sovereignty. A narcofeminist lens brings these gendered dimensions of drug policing into better view. Here, the ‘possessive logics’ that Aileen Moreton-Robinson implicates in the performativity of patriarchal white sovereignty on the part of the ‘postcolonising’ Australian state find their pretext and source of legitimation in the rhetoric of drugs and the fantasised sovereign subject it maintains as a requirement for the general functioning of the law: the ‘master of her intentions and desires’, in Derrida’s words. This mobilisation of technologies of abjection under the guise of drug enforcement is part of a longer story about the racialisation of sexuality and the sexualisation of race as biopolitical trajectories that naturalise and maintain settler-colonialism and its worlds. Countering their violence entails forging new solidarities among minoritarian constituencies that articulate, affirm and reactivate the non-sovereign potentials/performatives that inhere in our mutual vulnerability and relationally-constituted capacity for endurance.

ASSESSING THE PROGRESSIVE PROMISE OF HBO’S THE WIRE

HBO’s The Wire garnered critical acclaim for its portrayal of the urban problems of the city of Baltimore, particularly its Black population, specifically those engaged in the street-level drug trade. One of the main accolades was the show’s realism in its portrayal of life on the streets. It also received praise for giving its characters more depth in comparison to shows that had come before it. This was seen as giving a more compassionate and less stereotyping view of those characters. This article will address the issue of stereotypes, whether the show’s realism furthered the reduction of stereotypes of Blacks, and will assess the critical acclaim the show has received in the two decades since it premiered.

Trace residue identification, characterization, and longitudinal monitoring of the novel synthetic opioid β-U10, from discarded drug paraphernalia.

Empirical data regarding dynamic alterations in illicit drug supply markets in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, including the potential for introduction of novel drug substances and/or increased poly‐drug combination use at the “street” level, that is, directly proximal to the point of consumption, are currently lacking. Here, a high‐throughput strategy employing ambient ionization‐mass spectrometry is described for the trace residue identification, characterization, and longitudinal monitoring of illicit drug substances found within >6,600 discarded drug paraphernalia (DDP) samples collected during a pilot study of an early warning system for illicit drug use in Melbourne, Australia from August 2020 to February 2021, while significant COVID‐19 lockdown conditions were imposed. The utility of this approach is demonstrated for the de novo identification and structural characterization of β‐U10, a previously unreported naphthamide analog within the “U‐series” of synthetic opioid drugs, including differentiation from its α‐U10 isomer without need for sample preparation or chromatographic separation prior to analysis. Notably, β‐U10 was observed with 23 other drug substances, most commonly in temporally distinct clusters with heroin, etizolam, and diphenhydramine, and in a total of 182 different poly‐drug combinations. Longitudinal monitoring of the number and weekly “average signal intensity” (ASI) values of identified substances, developed here as a semi‐quantitative proxy indicator of changes in availability, relative purity and compositions of street level drug samples, revealed that increases in the number of identifications and ASI for β‐U10 and etizolam coincided with a 50% decrease in the number of positive detections and an order of magnitude decrease in the ASI for heroin.

Reaching High: Translating Emergent Practices of Street-Level Drug Users to Institute Harm Reduction in Durban—Implications for Urban Governance

Problematic drug use is a growing problem in South African urban spaces. In Durban, as in other cities in the country, the dominant response of the capital-oriented Municipality has been to make drug use invisible through prohibition and a promotion of abstinence approaches. This governance mentality and technology has failed dismally, evidenced in the rise of street-level heroin use. During the COVID-19 hard lockdown, the municipality was forced to re-examine its governance approach to drug use, taking guidance from non-state actors in an attempt to more effectively reduce the harms associated with drug use. In tracing the historical contestations around street-level drug use in Durban, this paper shares the untold story of how, when prompted by an unforeseen crisis, a municipality was able to successfully shift its mentality and technology in governing street-level drug use. Drawing conceptually on nodal governance theory and the quadruple helix approach, it reveals the complexities of urban governance processes and demonstrates the power of political opportunities, the transformative role of unexpected consequences, and the importance of informed political leadership. It also shows how multi-stakeholder partnership projects can be a useful mechanism not only to implement innovative and creative policy goals, but also to build robust relationships to navigate the manifestation of informal urbanism. It also calls for governing through harm minimisation rather than through actuarial risk management approaches that are closely associated with a neoliberal agenda.

“The business is about knowing who to sell to”: Nigerian retail-level drug dealers’ strategies for avoiding police arrest

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 31 male commercially-oriented retail dealers selling multiple substances in a street-level drug market recruited through snowball sampling in Uyo, Nigeria, this study explores situated strategies for minimizing the risk of police arrest. Findings highlight four broad strategies: selling to genuine buyers, using mobile phones, discreet transactions, and temporary desistance. These strategies are situated within local drug markets and law enforcement context. Strategies were oriented towards avoiding arrest for criminal complicity, negotiating changing relationship to law enforcement, and reducing visibility through a combination of phone calls and delivery services. It is argued that while restrictive deterrence may displace retail drug dealing, it does not lead to overall reduction in frequency of sales. Further, police complicity in drug trade through bribery limits restrictive deterrence. Measures that prioritize the demand-side of drug markets, including treatment for dependent users, should be considered, while refocusing law enforcement on large-scale traffickers.

How the Rockefeller Laws Hit the Streets: Drug Policing and the Politics of State Competence in New York City, 1973–1989

Recent studies have shown that the punitive drug laws enacted in the mid-1970s led to a sharp increase in incarceration only in the mid-1980s, when city police departments started policing street-level drug markets much more intensively. The case study of New York City in the wake of the Rockefeller Drug Laws of 1973 presents an explanation. Only when new policing ideas, popular dissatisfaction with street crime, and the revival of the city's fiscal capacity coalesced as part of a larger project to rebuild urban governance in the aftermath of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s did New York turn toward street-level drug enforcement. An examination of the political history of street-level drug enforcement offers a better understanding of the history of New York's war on drugs, as well as a new chronology of the political dynamics of state rebuilding in the 1980s.

Behavioral Changes among Street Level Drug Trafficking Organizations and the Fluctuation in Drug Prices Before and During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This article focused on behavioral changes in street-level drug trafficking organizations and drug price fluctuations at the retail level during the COVID-19 in Germany, specifically in North Rhine-Westphalia. This study's primary purpose was to understand how the pandemic affected low-level drug markets and whether precautions taken to prevent the spread of disease caused any changes in their operations. Moreover, drug prices were compared before and during the Corona-19 pandemic. This study used a narrative analysis. Thirteen participants, some of whom used multiple drugs and all of whom are regular users, were interviewed from March 2020 to September 2020. Study results showed no significant change either in open or closed markets except for curfew times. Moreover, no shortages existed in the drug supply chain. Nevertheless, there were slight changes in drug distribution methods. Furthermore, contrary to the assumptions, the demand for using the Internet drug market did not increase during the pandemic.

P-value Problems? An Examination of Evidential Value in Criminology

This study aims to assess the evidential value of the knowledgebase in criminology after accounting for the presence of potential Type I errors. The present study examines the distribution of 1248 p-values (that inform 84 statistically significant outcomes across 26 systematic reviews) in meta-analyses on the topic of crime and justice published by the Campbell Collaboration (CC) using p-curve analysis. The distribution of all CC p-values have a significant cluster of p-values immediately below 0.05, which is indicative of p-hacking. Evidential value (right skewed p-curves) is detected in most meta-analytic topic areas but not motivational interviewing (substance use outcome), sex offender treatment (sexual/general recidivism), police legitimacy (procedural justice), street-level drug law enforcement (total crime), and treatment effectiveness in secure corrections (juvenile recidivism). More studies, especially carefully designed and implemented randomized experiments with sufficiently large sample sizes, are needed before we are able to affirm the presence of evidential value and replicability of studies in all CC topic areas with confidence.

Middle childhood vulnerability to drugs and alcohol

Purpose There are identified problems facing law enforcement in the correct approach to childhood drug and alcohol use at street level which can cause aggression, developmental, psychological problems and family conflict (Maher and Dixon, 1999). Childhood exposure to drugs and alcohol can encourage criminal activity, anti-social conduct and increased child-to-parent conflict (Brook et al., 1992; Reinherz et al., 2000; Coogan, 2011; McElhone, 2017). Design/methodology/approach The purpose of this study is to explore middle-childhood (11-15 years) experiences of drugs and alcohol through a survey to determine the earliest opportunity for the involvement of services based on the experiences of children. Findings The key findings are alcohol consumption in middle childhood is supported by parental alcohol provision; those in middle childhood are most likely to consume alcohol at home and drugs at street level (any place away from home including school, young clubs, open public space and parks); children in middle childhood use mainly cannabis to experience euphoria, minimize childhood problems and to fulfill acquisitive desire; and late childhood shows movement away from street-level drug use to drug use in private spaces with friends and increased levels of experiential or social drinking, within spaces shared by larger social groups. Practical implications The authors propose that a health-orientated early help model in middle childhood should be adopted, with support such as community- and school-based child and parental drug education; wider information sharing between schools, policing and health authorities at an early stage to support a contextual safeguarding approach; and recognition and recording practices around middle childhood which is an acute phase for children to become involved in drug and alcohol consumption. Originality/value Children’s drug use in middle childhood is often not recorded, and the problem can be associated with simple ill-parenting approaches. The authors believe that little was known about the spaces and occurrence of drug and alcohol use in middle childhood.

The Drug Business as a Field of Struggle in Turkey

ABSTRACT The organization of the street-level drug business has been a central concern of many contemporary urban crime ethnographies in the West; however, it has never been researched in Turkey. Addressing the literature gap, this article examines the methods of a local drug enterprise in Ankara through offender-based research. Ethnographic data demonstrates that the local drug trade tends to be structured as a field of struggle in which agents make affective investments and wrestle for material and symbolic rewards, characterized by fast cash and notoriety. Resultantly, two main ranks emerge, of drug enterprise owners and dealers/lookouts. Enterprise owners journey far in their criminal trajectories and thus hold a higher level of street capital dependent on their prestige and infamous reputations. However, lookouts consist of lower-class, disadvantaged youths lacking any experience aside from daring and physical prowess. Their search for recognition and an ethos of criminal cultural consumerism create a potential source of conflict and therefore nourishes the dynamism of the field. Unless the marginalized youths’ such psychosocial dynamics are considered, anti-drug policies will go wide of the mark due to their ignorance.

Illicit Drug Markets, Consumer Capitalism and the Rise of Social Media: A Toxic Trap for Young People

This article explores young people’s involvement in illicit drug markets in England. It focuses in particular on why young people become involved in illicit drug distribution, the extent to which their involvement is predicated on adults’ use of threats and violence, and how young people frame the morality of drug dealing. The article’s findings are based on a unique dataset generated by a six-month period of online social media platform analysis, alongside additional data drawn from periods of observation, focus groups and interviews with young people and professionals. In short, I argue that drug prohibition, consumer capitalism, severe levels of inequality, and emerging problems associated with the rise of online social media are combining to produce a toxic trap that is dragging tens of thousands of young people into street-level drug dealing. Considered in this context, the inadequacy of the UK government’s response to some of the main harms associated with illicit drug markets is clear: children and young people will continue to be coerced and exploited until either drug markets are legalized and regulated, or they have realistic opportunities to pursue lives that offer genuine meaning, decent levels of income, and levels of status and respect that are comparable to those provided by drug distribution.

Situating Vulnerability and Exploitation in Street-Level Drug Markets: Cuckooing, Commuting, and the “County Lines” Drug Supply Model

The emergence of “county lines” drug dealing, a supply model which sees drug dealers travel from urban hubs to provincial locations to retail heroin and crack cocaine, is now established in the United Kingdom. This market trend has been associated with novel and evolving distribution practices, yet arguably most problematic is its reliance on forms of exploitative labor undertaken by vulnerable populations. Drawing principally on interviews with local drug-involved adults, this article is the first to undertake in-depth analysis of their experience of risky street-level labor in “host” towns. Findings suggest that despite violence and intimidation, many saw county lines labor as preferable to other income generating activity, and contrary to popular enforcement narratives, they often became involved though constrained choice. As such, it is argued that the policy response might resemble one of building resilience through multiagency support, which better equips “structurally vulnerable” populations to exit exploitative relationships.

The variable and evolving nature of \u2018cuckooing\u2019 as a form of criminal exploitation in street level drug markets

A form of criminal exploitation rarely mentioned in the academic literature has recently emerged, evolved and taken meaningful hold in the UK. Hundreds of cases of ‘cuckooing’ have been reported, where heroin and crack cocaine dealers associated with the so-called ‘County Lines’ supply methodology have taken over the homes of local residents and created outposts to facilitate their supply operations in satellite locations. Dominant narratives surrounding this practice have stressed its exploitative nature and the vulnerabilities of those involved. Combining qualitative data from two studies, this paper critically analyses the model of cuckooing and the experiences of those affected. In turn it explores the impact of County Lines on affected areas and local populations, a topic that has received little academic scrutiny. Four typologies of cuckooing are constructed, highlighting its variance and complexity. Findings also suggest it to be a growing method of criminal exploitation beyond drug supply with a possible burgeoning presence being realised internationally.

Legitimacy in Criminal Governance: Managing a Drug Empire from Behind Bars

States, rebels, and mafias all provide governance beyond their core membership; increasingly, so do prison gangs. US gangs leverage control over prison life to govern street-level drug markets. Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) gang goes further, orchestrating paralyzing attacks on urban targets, while imposing a social order throughout slums that sharply reduces homicides. We analyze hundreds of seized PCC documents detailing its drug business and internal disciplinary system. Descriptively, we find vast, consignment-based trafficking operations whose profits fund collective benefits for members’ families; elaborate bureaucratic procedures and recordkeeping; and overwhelmingly nonviolent punishments for debt-nonpayment and misconduct. These features, we argue, reflect a deliberate strategy of creating rational-bureaucratic legitimacy in criminal governance. The PCC’s collectivist norms, fair procedures, and meticulous “criminal criminal records” facilitate community stigmatization of infractors, giving mild sanctions punitive heft and inducing widespread voluntary compliance without excessive coercion. This has aided the PCC’s rapid expansion across Brazil.

Risk Terrains of Illicit Drug Activities in Durham Region, Ontario

Street-level drug activities pose a serious problem for communities, and exploring the environmental context of drug crimes is one important aspect of the increasing problem in Canada. This study examined the urban backcloth of illicit drug activities in the Durham Region, Ontario. Drawing on the locations of 5,297 drug arrests between 2011and 2013, along with 6,291 surrounding physical features in the environment, the risk terrain modelling framework guided the analyses, which revealed that the risk of drug crimes varies by context and time. Similar to previous research in the United States and the Netherlands, the authors found that 11 out of 18 correlates were significantly associated with drug crimes. Unlike other study settings, the locations of alcohol sales and service did not predict the occurrence of drug crimes in the Durham Region. In addition, the risk clusters differed when the same correlates were modelled for incidents of each year separately. The models provided a valid prediction from one year to the next. Nearly 85% of all places with illicit drugs arrests in 2012 and 2013 overlapped with high-risk places of 2011 and 2012, respectively. The resulting risk map informs practitioners and policy makers on where to focus resources in the region.

Classifying “Micro” Routine Activities of Street-level Drug Transactions

Objectives: Routine activities theory attempts to link the intersection of individuals’ everyday routine activities to crime events at particular places. This study examines crime events not just as the product of intersecting macroroutine activities but also microroutines (similar to crime “scripts”) that occur immediately before, during, and after a crime event occurs. Method: Closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage was accessed through Baltimore City Police Department from 2010 to 2011. Ethnographic techniques and systematic social observation of CCTV footage were used to categorize the microroutines of 74 street-level illicit drug transactions. Results: The findings illuminate eight microroutines of drug crime events that classify behaviors associated with illicit drug activity. Conclusions: This study advances our understanding of the link between routine activities and drug crime by examining how illicit transactions unfold from microroutines using a rarely employed, but fruitful source of data (CCTV footage).

The Changing Shape of Street-Level Heroin and Crack Supply in England: Commuting, Holidaying and Cuckooing Drug Dealers Across ‘County Lines’

Street-level drug markets have traditionally been understood as operating predominantly at a local level, and there has been an absence of contemporary research that has challenged accepted thinking around their shape and organization. This article aims to outline an important development in the retail drug supply landscape, analysing a fast evolving and expanding drug supply model that involves ‘outreach’ selling from major supply hubs, direct to heroin/crack users in provincial satellite areas. Drawing on a mixed method approach analysing heroin/crack markets in six English locales, we explore how so-called ‘county lines’ drug dealing manifests in these spaces. Findings suggest that distinctive supply practices including ‘commuting’, ‘holidaying’ and ‘cuckooing’ have emerged and that out-of-town dealers regularly exploit vulnerable populations in order to maximize economic gain in these new ‘host’ drug markets.

Cost Analysis of the Country of Georgia’s Street Level Drug Testing Policy

Abstract Background In 2006 the country of Georgia implemented Article 45 of the Administrative code and Article 273 of the Criminal Code of Georgia, a public policy that enable police to detain any individual, anywhere, at any time on grounds of suspicion of drug use; and require them to submit to urine screening to test for the presence of illegal drugs and their metabolites. This policy is referred to as the street drug testing policy. Positive drug screening results in fines and potential jail time. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a cost analysis of this policy and assess the execution of the policy and the extent to which the policy meets its stated aims. Methods This study employed cost analysis methodology to calculate annual direct material and labor costs associated with carrying out Georgia’s street level drug testing policy. These costs encompassed law enforcement, drug testing, associated judicial processes, imprisonment and income offset through fines collected during the two years covered in this study (2008 and 2014). In addition, we measured: fidelity of the execution of the policy measured by the accuracy of the percentage of people detained who were found to actually have used drugs; and the policy’s effectiveness in deterring drug use among those who tested positive. Impact on drug use behavior was measured through impact analysis interviews conducted with a national sample of 500 detainees who tested positive for drugs under Article 45 and Article 273. Results Using conservative financial estimates the cost of carrying out the policy offset by fine revenues broke even in 2008 (−111,889 GEL); however, by 2014 the costs increased 20 % in conjunction with an 18 % increase in the number of people detained for testing. However, the percentage of people who tested positive for drugs declined 39 % indicating decreased fidelity in the execution of the policy; accompanied by a financial imbalance of −10,277,909 GEL. Moreover, effectiveness analysis revealed that within one month of being detained and having tested positive for drug use, over 90 % of individuals had returned to pre-detention drug use levels, and within 12 months 100 % of detainees had resumed prior drug use behaviors. Conclusion The financial costs associated with Georgia’s street level drug screening policy has rapidly increased while becoming decreasingly accurate and efficient in its execution. Moreover, data indicates that the policy is not effective in reducing or stopping drug use among those who tested positive. In conclusion, it is fiscally unsustainable to continue the policy as it is being executed and the policy is ineffective in changing drug use behavior among people who use illegal substances.

Symbolic policing: situating targeted police operations/‘crackdowns’ on street-level drug markets

ABSTRACTThe policing of local drug markets in England often takes the form of specific, high-profile, crackdown operations which themselves are mostly a generic, periodic response to particular criminality. Drawing on Innes’ (2004) concept of ‘control signals’ and Edelman’s (1985) notion of ‘symbolic policy’, we argue that ‘symbolic policing’ relates to activity that is principally about achieving symbolic aims – ‘being seen to be doing something’ rather than preventing or solving crime. This article, focusing on police crackdown operations on heroin and crack cocaine ‘dealers’ in three English urban areas, considers the meanings of such operations, how they work, and in relation to local suppliers suggests they may in fact have counterproductive enforcement outcomes whilst still achieving symbolic objectives. It is concluded that generic crackdown operations at the level of local drug markets are unhelpfully insensitive to local conditions and that, in certain circumstances, they can be antithetical to more considered enforcement and public health aims.