Drug Law Enforcement in Urban Neighborhoods during the Crime Drop

• In Event: Policing the Working Poor, Street Vendors, and Homeless Drug Users – Would a Diverse Force Matter?

Abstract

There is a web of reciprocal relationships between violent crime, socioeconomic disadvantage, and drug law enforcement in cities. Given possible effects on neighborhoods of the penal outcomes of drug arrests (e.g., incarceration), it is important to determine if drug law enforcement is most focused in proximity to cities' most vulnerable places and populations. Using reported offense and arrest data for census tracts in four cities, this study asks whether the concentration of drug arrests within cities overlaps with concentrations of violent crime and of socioeconomic disadvantage. It further analyzes inequalities in drug law enforcement levels between neighborhoods where most residents are non-Hispanic white, African-American, and Hispanic, as well as inequalities in the average drug arrest levels occurring in the neighborhoods of individuals by race/ethnicity and poverty status. Longitudinal drug arrest data are used to ascertain whether these patterns were altered during the national crime drop or in relation to reorganizations of state-funded housing.

Author

• Michael Seth Friedson, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater