Neighborhood Crime Victimization, Drug Use and Drug Sales: Results From the 'Fighting Back' Evaluation

Summary

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A fundamental premise of the "Fighting Back" program was the existence of a direct causal relationship between drug use and crime. Using data from the evaluation of the program and spatial hierarchical models, we examine whether drug use and the presence of visible drug sales lead to elevated levels of three types of crime: assault, burglary, and theft. Our analysis controls for neighborhood disadvantage, racial and Hispanic concentration, percent renter occupied, and population density. For crime victimization rates by neighborhood, we find that for burglary, neighborhood disadvantage, the presence of visible drug sales, and drug use are related to victimization. None of the control variables demonstrate a significant impact on burglary victimization. For assault, only neighborhood disadvantage and visible drug sales are statistically significant, and for theft, only visible drug sales influence the rate of criminal activity. Considering the Fighting Back intervention, there are no differences in changing crime patterns of reported burglary, assault, and theft from 1983 through 1995 and no differences in the pattern of changing crime victimization rates for 1997 to 1999 between the Fighting Back and comparison sites. Possible reasons for the lack of effects of drug use prevention programs in crime reduction and possible alternative strategies are also discussed.

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Neighborhood Crime Victimization, Drug Use and Drug Sales: Results From the 'Fighting Back' Evaluation

INTRODUCTION

One of the expressed goals of the community intervention program "Fighting Back," funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, was to achieve a "reduction in drug-related crime" (Isaacs & Knickman, 2004). Two interrelated assumptions informed the orientation of the program: first, that drug use was elevated in disadvantaged neighborhoods and, second, that by reducing the demand for drugs, crime in these areas could also be reduced. However, despite its intuitive plausibility, there was little empirical evidence that drug use was higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods or that use was causally associated with crime. Adding to the ambiguity of the relationship was the fact that many of these neighborhoods also suffered from elevated rates of visible drug sales. In other words, to the extent that drugs are implicated in various kinds of crime, it remains an open question as to whether targeting substance use or drug dealing is of primary importance. This paper assesses these aspects of the Fighting Back project by examining the empirical relation between drug use and the neighborhood-level presence of drug dealing, burglary, theft, assault rates, and victimization by using the 1997 and 1999 surveys conducted in the Fighting Back project and comparison communities. We supplemented the Fighting Back data with information on reported crime from 1983 to 1995 in order to assess the extent to which the crime patterns diverge in the target sites from those in the comparison sites after the implementation of the program.

CORRELATES OF CRIME: DRUG USE, NEIGHBORHOOD DEMOGRAPHICS, AND VISIBLE D...

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