The Effect of an Unsanctioned Safe Consumption Site on Place-Based Crime

• In Event: Drugs, Drug Markets, and Crime: Attempting to Unpack the Drug-Crime Relationship

Abstract

Safe consumption sites are spaces where individuals are able to bring and consume pre-obtained illicit substances in a monitored setting. While there are over one hundred safe consumption sites internationally, only two sanctioned sites have opened in the United States. While prior literature indicates that the establishment of a safe consumption site has null or negative effects on measures of crime and public disorder in the immediate vicinity of the site, there are few studies that examine this relationship domestically. The current study investigates the relationship between the opening and closure of an unsanctioned safe consumption site on neighborhood crime trends in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. A difference-in-difference poisson regression analysis is used to compare property, personal, and drug-related crime trends in the vicinity of the safe consumption site with the surrounding areas of twelve needle exchange programs that do not offer consumption services. Preliminary analyses demonstrate no significant differences in the quantity or type of crimes reported by police across observed locations. These findings support the conclusions of international literature on the subject, suggesting that the opening of a safe consumption site does not result in negative crime outcomes.

Author

• Codey Jesse Carr, University of Maryland