Search results

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether trends in arrests for heroin, amphetamine‐type substances (ATS) and cocaine can be used as indicators of trends in the use of these drugs.

The question was addressed using ARIMA models to analyse the relationship between arrests and emergency department (ED) admissions for narcotics, amphetamine type substances (ATS) and cocaine.

Strong positive correlations were found for the narcotics and cocaine series between arrests and EDs in the same month (contemporaneous correlation) and between arrests in the current month and overdoses in earlier months (lagged correlation). The contemporaneous correlation between ATS arrests and EDs was slightly less strong than the lagged correlations at two and four months. A jump in ATS EDs, was followed by a jump in arrests in the same month and then two and four months later.

Arrests for narcotics use/possession, ATS use/possession and cocaine use/possession may in some circumstances provide useful intelligence about drug trends and/or a basis for evaluating the impact of police drug law enforcement activity on the use of narcotics, ATS and cocaine when other stronger measures of drug use are not available.

Efforts to evaluate local drug law enforcement activity on illicit drug use have been hampered by poor measures of trends in illicit drug use at small area levels. This is the only study the authors are aware of that has examined the long‐term relationship between illicit drug arrests and emergency department admissions for illicit drug use.

This study investigates the effects of a broad-based policy change that altered maternal employment, family income, and other family characteristics on drug-related crime among youth. Specifically, we exploit differences in the implementation of welfare reform in the United States across states and over time in the attempt to identify causal effects of welfare reform on youth arrests for drug-related crimes between 1990 and 2005, the period during which welfare reform unfolded. We use monthly arrest data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports to estimate the effects of welfare reform implementation on drug-related arrests among 15- to 17-year-old teens exposed to welfare reform. The findings, based on numerous different model specifications, suggest that welfare reform had no statistically significant effect on teen drug arrests. Most estimates were positive and suggestive of a small (3%) increase in arrests.

The purpose of this paper is to test the ability of expectancy motivation theory to explain patrol officer drug arrest productivity, with the hope of identifying ways to influence patrol officer work outputs.

According to expectancy motivational theory, the individual patrol officer's number of drug arrests should be explained by the expectation to make drug arrests, the capability to do so, the opportunity to do so, and the likelihood that these arrests will be rewarded. The present study used survey data from a sample of 401 municipal police officers representing 23 suburban police agencies in one metropolitan area in the Midwestern USA. Multivariate analysis was used to investigate correlations between the officers' perceived work environment characteristics and their individual drug offense arrest productivity.

As predicted, officers who produced the most drug arrests were more likely to have perceived that drug arrests were rewarded by their agency, perceived that management saw drug enforcement as a priority, received specialized training in drug interdiction, and perceived that they had sufficient time in their shift to properly investigate suspected drug offenses.

The limitations of this study include the fact that the sample is limited to suburban police officers in one metropolitan area, and the reliance on primarily self‐reported data on officer arrest outputs.

The present study lends further support to the use of expectancy motivation theory as a viable framework for managing patrol officer work outputs in a law enforcement organization.

The present study holds value for police administrators who seek to better manage patrol officer behavior in the field. It also holds value for scholars of policing who seek to better understand how the organizational work environment influences general tendencies in officer arrest behavior.

The dynamics of drug use and trafficking in Poland have changed dramatically since the early 1990s. These changes include legal definitions of drug use, the actors involved in trafficking, and the types of drugs traversing the country. The Polish police force experienced two significant reforms in the 1990s and drug‐related legislation underwent significant reconstruction in 1997 and 2000, while drug trafficking operations continue to persist by organized criminal groups. The purpose of this study is to qualitatively investigate these police reforms and drug legislation developments since 1990, and empirically analyze the interaction effects of these reforms with drug trafficking arrests in Poland.

Officially reported annual data were tested using multivariate regression analyses.

The findings observed from this exploratory study suggest that both the police reforms and changes in drug‐related legislation positively affected the number of arrests for drug trafficking. Additionally, this study found support for an increase in efficiency of the policing model despite the recent decline in the strength of the police force. Interestingly, the number of police officers in the country had no effect on any of the variables.

Quantitatively, the small number of observations poses limitations on the interpretation of the multivariate regression results. In addition, future research should include additional explanatory variables to achieve a greater comprehensive summary of the interaction effects of policing reforms and drug‐related legislation with drug trafficking arrests.

This paper illustrates the need for accurate and timely national‐level, systematically collected data on drug‐ and police‐related indicators that will allow for more inclusive and comprehensive analyses.

This study is one of the first to empirically examine potential interaction effects of police reform and drug‐related legislation on drug trafficking arrests in Poland.

Interviews over 120 sellers and low‐level distributors of the drug “crack” in New York City. Documents seller strategies to counter police tactics. Finds that crack sellers and distributors have developed several important strategies to limit vulnerability to arrest, but that success in avoiding arrest diminishes considerably once they are detected by police. Suggests that problem‐oriented approaches are better than crackdowns, since they permanently disrupt the environmental conditions that foster drug market sites.

The purpose of the study is to provide empirical data on cases of drug‐related police corruption. It identifies and describes incidents in which police officers were arrested for criminal offenses associated with drug‐related corruption.

The study is a quantitative content analysis of news articles identified through the Google News search engine using 48 automated Google Alerts queries. Statistical analyses include classification trees to examine causal pathways between drugs and corruption.

Data were analyzed on 221 drug‐related arrest cases of officers employed by police agencies throughout the USA. Findings show that drug‐related corruption involves a wide range of criminal offenses, and that cocaine is the most prevalent drug. Older officers and those employed by large agencies are less likely than others to lose their jobs after a drug‐related arrest.

The study is limited by the quality of the available content in each case. The data are also limited to cases that involve an official arrest. Additionally, the data are the result of a filtering process that includes the exercise of media discretion as to types of news stories reported and the content devoted to particular news stories.

The data provide documentation of drug‐related corruption and the drug trade in 141 police agencies and the need for police executives to develop effective strategies to address it.

The study augments the few drug corruption studies published and is the only study known to describe drug‐related corruption at many police agencies across the USA.

Criminal law has dramatically expanded since the 1970s. Despite popular and academic attention to overcriminalization in the United States, empirical research on how court actors and, in particular, prosecutors, use the legal tools associated with overcriminalization is scarce. In this chapter, we describe three forms of overcriminalization that, in theory, have created new tools for prosecutors: the criminalization of new behaviors, mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, and the internal expansion of criminal laws. We then use a unique dataset of felony filings and dispositions in Florida from 1995 to 2015 to test a series of hypotheses examining how overcriminalization influences prosecutorial practices given three changes to the political economy during this time: the decline in violent and property crime, the Great Recession, and a growing call for criminal justice reform. We find that prosecutors have been unconstrained by declining crime rates. Yet, rather than rely on new criminal statutes or mandatory minimum sentence laws, they maintained their caseloads by increasing their filing rates for traditional violent, property and drug offenses. At the same time, the data demonstrate nonviolent other offenses are the top charge in almost 20% of the felony caseload between 2005 and 2015. Our findings also suggest that, despite reform rhetoric, filing and conviction rates decreased due to the Recession, not changes in the law. We discuss the implications of these findings for criminal justice reform.

Examines the determinants of illegal drug arrests based on the 1991 data for 48 states in the USA. Major findings indicate that illegal drug arrests have a positive relation with welfare (AFDC) recipients, high school dropout rates, field police force and other types of crime, and a negative relation with the unemployment rate. Policy implications of this study are that to reduce illegal drug crime, the government and parents need to emphasize family values and work ethics, provide quality education and proper counselling, increase field police size or make police more productive, and reduce other types of crime.

More than half of those who are incarcerated have cited a history of drug abuse before or during arrest. Although social science literature has noted the disparate effects of criminal sentencing for drug possession, little research has explored the punitive measures enacted and enforced by the correctional facilities in which prisoners reside.

Using data from the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities, this study estimates a series of logistic regressions to examine the predictors of receiving disciplinary action. Men and women are examined separately to investigate whether these patterns vary across men’s and women’s correctional facilities. The notions of both symbolic and structural violence are used to gain a better understanding of the experiences of drug addicts who are incarcerated.

Findings indicate that net of the effect of demographic characteristics and previous contact with the criminal legal system, men who are punished for rule violations involving drugs in prisons are approximately twice as likely to receive disciplinary action than inmates who are disciplined for all infractions, other than assaulting other inmates. Moreover, black inmates are significantly more likely to receive disciplinary actions or sanctions than whites.

The findings suggest that disciplinary action is more frequently experienced by those who are drug dependent or use drugs within prison with an even greater penalty for black prisoners in men’s facilities.

The movement of policing from a traditional reactive approach to a more proactive ‘intelligence‐led’ approach has been a widespread but infrequently evaluated process. This study compares 200 offenders arrested for dealing Class A drugs in public spaces, half of whom have been arrested through ‘intelligence‐led’ police operations and half of whom have been arrested through traditional ‘reactive’ approaches. Analysis shows the offenders arrested through an intelligence‐led approach show a ‘local lifestyle’ profile. They are more likely to be older, be unemployed and live closer to their drug market, are less likely to diversify in relation to the illicit drugs sold, and show a high incidence of prior offending (especially in relation to acquisitive crime). The study argues that taking an intelligence‐led approach to open drug markets identifies prolific offenders who cause the most distress to the local community, as well as highlighting those most in need for treatment services.