Drug Markets, Travel Distance, and Violence: Testing a Typology

• NCJ Number: 249051
• Author(s): Lallen T. Johnson
• Date Published: January 2015
• Length: 16 pages
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Award: Journeys to buy and sell illegal narcotics in Philadelphia drug markets

Annotation

Using distance as a proxy for social ties, the four-market category typology developed by Reuter and MacCoun suggests that the mixing of drug buyers and sellers from various distances has implications for the amount of violence expected to occur within them. The current research performed a partial test of that typology, using 5 years of arrest and incident data from the Philadelphia Police Department.

Abstract

The factors complicating the understanding of the drugs and violence nexus include the role of community structure and subculture, and situational features of market exchanges. In the current study, multilevel models revealed that compared with markets with local buyers and sellers, those characterized by lengthier travel patterns had significantly higher counts of violent incidents. (Publisher abstract modified)