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This chapter argues that the Americanisation of online policing has questionable impacts in Australian prosecutions involving drugs obtained and distributed through dark web cryptomarkets. The authors describe several Australian prosecutions of mid- and low-level dealers who have accessed drugs through the dark web and contrast these with the United States (US) case against the cryptomarket, AlphaBay. The discussion in this study emphasises how Australian police and courts view the relative weight of dark web activity associated with the domestic and transnational supply of illicit drugs that result in formal prosecutions. The authors suggest that large-scale forms of online and dark web police surveillance undertaken by US enforcement agencies reflect Ethan Nadelmann’s (Cops across borders: the internationalization of US criminal law enforcement, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993) thesis on the Americanisation of global policing through transnational communications networks. The authors then explain how key elements of transnational dark web drug supply appear to have a marginal bearing on criminal investigations into low- and mid-level traffickers in Australia, which rely on conventional surveillance tactics to identify clandestine mail pickups, physical distribution methods, and irregular money trails. However, the authors then illustrate how the Americanisation of online policing that targets high-level entrepreneurs and seeks to dismantle or eliminate dark web cryptomarkets has important implications on Australian reforms aimed at enhancing online surveillance powers to target a range of crimes that are often wrongly associated with illicit drug cryptomarkets. The authors conclude by demonstrating how intensive dark web surveillance has limited direct impact on routine drug policing in Australia, with dark web communications simply another medium for facilitating the physical detection of illicit transnational drug transactions.

Drug sales facilitated through digital communication on the surface web and on darknet cryptomarkets have increased during the past two decades. This has resulted in an increase in drug law enforcement efforts to combat these markets and a subsequent increase in judicial sentencing of people selling drugs online. The aim of this study was to analyze how Swedish courts describe sentenced sellers and how the courts apply case law.

The empirical material consists of 71 sentencing documents produced by Swedish courts in cases of online drug selling between January 1, 2010 and January 1, 2020. In total, 99 sentenced persons occur in the documents. Using a qualitative research design, the authors analyzed the material through thematic text analysis.

Overall, in their descriptions of online drug sale operations, the courts’ characterizations of the concepts of street capital and digital capital show a dichotomy. These forms of capital are situationally described as both aggravating and mitigating aspects in the application of case law, indicating that it may be fruitful to view both street and digital capital as resources used on contemporary drug markets in general.

Very little research exists into how judicial systems describe and perceive the developing phenomenon of online drug sales. Using a relatively large sample from a decade of sentencing, the authors provide an analysis of how Swedish courts view and valuate capital forms in the online drugs trade.

The online sourcing, supply, and purchase of illicit drugs is fast transforming drug markets worldwide. Although the long-term development of simple communications technology over time (from pagers to mobile phones) continues to impact and extend local drug supply dynamics, it is the recent developments of dark web cryptomarkets, social media applications (like Instagram), encrypted messaging applications (like WhatsApp), and surface web platforms, such as LeafedOut, that are changing the drug supply landscape online. The use of technology in drug supply has tended to go hand in hand with improving the efficiency of supply and opportunities to reduce exchange-related risks for both buyers and sellers. In relation to app-mediated supply, for example, the use of encrypted messaging provides enhanced security for arranging purchases beyond the lurking surveillance of law enforcement. Despite the perception of improved safety, however, the use of social media apps and other online platforms can expose both buyers and sellers to risk scenarios they may not fully appreciate. Drawing on two recent studies on the use of social media apps and the online platform LeafedOut as mediators of drugs supply, this chapter will consider how these mid-range (between cryptomarkets and traditional telecommunications such as basic texting/calling and material ‘street’ markets) virtual spaces are being utilised for drug supply and the extent to which this is ‘just more of the same’ or provides new structures and experiences for those engaging with it and in what ways. Consideration will also be given to contradictions in the mid-range market space where the broad perception of reduced risk from the use of encrypted messaging can in fact produce greater levels of risk for some buyers and sellers depending on how they engage with the process/es.

This chapter explores the norms and assumptions that frame and sustain international drug policy and the international drug control regime. Drug policy is conceptualised as a ‘policy fiasco’ that persists despite extensive evidence of goal failure. The absence of effective monitoring and evaluation, impact assessment, stakeholder participation and mainstreaming of rights-based approaches, conflict sensitivity and gender sensitivity is emphasised, substantiating the argument that drug policy is a case study of ‘institutional path dependence’. Drug policy has repeatedly missed targets for achievement of a ‘drug free world’. This is explained through reference to the counterproductive and ‘unintended consequences’ of a drug policy approach of criminalisation. The impacts of drug policy enforcement are shown to be negative, pernicious and disproportionately born by the poor, by vulnerable communities and those subject to discrimination on account of race, gender and class.