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Effective Interventions Unit: Reducing the impact of local drug markets: A research review

Chapter 3 Supply Reduction

This chapter describes police enforcement interventions to reduce the supply of drugs to low-level markets and reviews studies of such interventions for evidence on their effectiveness.

These interventions are principally intended to deter people from engaging in drug dealing and associated crimes, and to reduce the quantity of drugs in circulation (making the purchase of drugs more difficult and expensive). One of the assumptions behind this approach is that by making drugs less accessible and / or more expensive, drug use and drug-related crime will fall accordingly ¹⁵.

We will first consider the evidence on enforcement interventions with the police acting as the sole intervention agency, before going on to look at the use of multi-agency approaches.

Police as the sole intervention agency

This section examines the evidence on police enforcement interventions to:

• Reduce drug dealing, and

• Disrupt drug dealing.

Conventional approaches involve police enforcement of criminal law. The international evidence reviewed identified a range of tactics that may be employed by the police, including the following:

• Raids of premises used for drug dealing / drug use.

• Crackdowns and sweeps: an increase in police activity, especially proactive enforcement. This is intended to dramatically increase the perceived and / or actual threat of arrest for specific types of offences in certain places or situations, to produce a general deterrent effect ¹⁶. It may involve high numbers of arrests and / or a large and highly visible police presence.

• The arrest & caution of buyers after leaving an area where dealing has taken place. ¹⁷

• 'Stop and search' of suspected dealers with the aim of finding possession of drugs to allow arrest.

• 'Sting' or 'buy & bust' operations: purchases of drugs by undercover police officers followed by arrest of the seller.

• Test purchases: purchases of drugs by undercover officers as part of a 'sting' operation, or in order to collect intelligence on drug dealers.

• Controlled purchases by registered police sources

Enforcement activities will be informed by police intelligence, which may be gathered by some or all of the following routes:

• Covert observations: by following suspects by foot or in vehicles or conducting surveillance on a targeted dealing site from an observation post such as an unoccupied building.

• Electronic surveillance: CCTV or police surveillance technology.

• Reports from the public / calls for service.

• Unofficial informants / registered police sources.

• Interviews with people detained in custody: to gather more information on drug related crime in the area.

The intended effects of these policing strategies are likely to encompass the following:

• To reduce the quantities of drugs in circulation and the number of deals taking place and / or to drive up the street price of drugs (by seizing drugs and making arrests).

• To disrupt drug markets, by making the process of buying and selling drugs more unpredictable and difficult, intended as acting as a deterrent to engaging in both dealing and / or buying.

Reducing drug dealing

Interventions have focused on concentrated police action in targeted areas, in the form of intensive 'crackdowns' or 'sweeps', and undercover operations. These have sometimes been augmented by greater efforts to enhance the collection of intelligence; for example, more crime reporting and information sharing by the public, as in the example below ¹⁸.

Other evaluations of police enforcement against open street markets are united by the use of intensified police enforcement efforts, although there are differences in the ways in which this has taken place. For example, some have opted for intensive buy-bust operations whereas others have focused on the greater use of high-visibility enforcement.

Intensifying enforcement activity requires more resources to be dedicated to drug policing than would normally be available. High visibility policing and covert surveillance appear to be especially resource intensive. As a consequence, approaches such as these tend to be sustainable for only short periods of time. Evidence of their impact indicates that they often have only short-lived effects.

Evaluations have also highlighted different approaches to the collection, collation and use of intelligence to informed police enforcement interventions. One example of this is the geographical analysis of intelligence to identify drug dealing 'hotspots' for targeting intensified policing.

The success of these efforts has been variable in terms of their impact on crime. Some have produced a degree of displacement of drug dealing to other areas or have moved open street markets to dealing from premises. There is also doubt over the extent to which approaches that have been successful can be transferred to other areas with an expectation of success. For example, the approach that was successful in Lynn failed when applied to a nearby town. This may have been due to differences in the local drug market, such as the presence of stronger supply chains in the area ¹⁹.

Disrupting drug dealing

It is also argued that enforcement action may reduce drug supply and demand in an area by disrupting the dealing practices of suppliers and inconveniencing potential buyers.

Disruption: the aim of policing in this respect is to introduce greater uncertainty for drug dealers by making drug dealing a more risky activity. This viewpoint reasons that, through disruption, dealers' capacity to deal will be limited.

Inconvenience: the function of policing in this respect is to increase the search time for buyers to find a supplier. This argument is based on the belief that irregular drug users will not conduct exhaustive searches for drugs. Therefore, by increasing the 'search time' to find a supplier, this ought to act as a deterrent to would-be buyers, decreasing the frequency of their purchases and therefore the level of their usage ²⁰.

Evidence regarding the effectiveness of disruption/inconvenience

There are a number of evaluations which show that enforcement crackdowns can lead to a significant increase in the number of arrests made, and a decrease in reported crime, at least in the short term. However such findings do not necessarily show that disrupting drug markets by intensified enforcement necessarily leads to a decrease in levels of drug dealing activity. Rather than being eradicated or diminished, drug markets may adapt to policing strategies and become more sophisticated. This may take the form of changes to dealing practices.

For example, a study of drug markets in England found that the use of test purchasing by police in some areas had led to drug sellers increasingly demanding that new buyers should consume drugs in their presence. This made test purchasing a risky strategy for officers to pursue. ²¹

Adaptations may also take the form of market displacement. For example, dealers in an open street market may react to policing strategies by switching to dealing from premises instead ²². Other studies have shown that superficially effective initiatives have seemed to displace drug dealing into neighbouring areas. ²³

There appears to be a lack of strong evidence on how police enforcement affects drug users' behaviour. In one study, drug users in six drug markets in London were interviewed about the characteristics of the markets and the impact of strategies used to tackle them. It found that drug users were very sensitive to police activity (or perceived activity); almost half of the research participants stated that the risk of enforcement was a crucial factor in deciding upon what drug market to use and when to use it. In comparing an open street market and a closed premises-based market, they found that the former was more vulnerable to policing strategies ²⁴.

However these respondents did not suggest that they would be deterred from buying drugs in the face of increased police activity; they would simply use a different 'market' or they would take greater care to avoid detection. As few of the participants in this study were inexperienced, novice or non-dependent drug users, it is perhaps unsurprising that inconvenience policing did not appear to reduce demand within this group.

Multi-agency enforcement approaches

The strongest evidence for the effectiveness of interventions against closed markets has been for approaches involving a degree of multi-agency involvement. This often also features the use of civil legal remedies rather than criminal law, and the use of situational crime prevention measures (such as environmental improvements). They do not necessarily involve the abandonment of conventional law enforcement measures such as those detailed in the previous section. There is no generic approach to multi-agency working and examples of evaluated interventions in the literature all appear to include a number of different elements. Rather, they adopt a problem-oriented approach, tailoring the range of interventions employed to the nature of the problem in evidence. Having said this, the programmes that have been rigorously evaluated have tended to comprise interventions involving property management, and have been based on interventions in the US.

This section will describe the US evidence on interventions using civil legal remedies (which principally involves the use of property management procedures). It will then examine some multi-agency work that has taken place in the UK and discuss the role of situational crime prevention in multi-agency interventions.

Use of civil legal remedies

Evaluated interventions from the US have involved police working with:

• Private landlords and property owners

• Local housing authorities

• Tenants

• Municipal & public utility inspectors

These interventions have typically involved the use of civil statutes and regulations rather then criminal law. These have been used in the US in a variety of ways to prevent or reduce criminal problems. Many instances of the use of civil remedies have targeted non-offending third parties, principally to compel owners and landlords to maintain drug- and nuisance- free properties (these are often referred to as 'nuisance abatement' strategies). However civil remedies have also been used to directly target offending individuals (e.g. restraining orders and injunctions), often as intermediate steps towards criminal sanctions. The research that will be outlined here focuses on the former type of civil intervention, i.e. those directed towards non-offending third parties ²⁵.

These interventions involved the police working with local housing associations and authorities to evict known drug dealers, and the enforcement/ threat of enforcement of civil codes directed towards landlords and owners. The following example provides an illustration of the former.

The following describes an example of the use of civil codes to compel landlords and property owners in San Diego to take action. This was found to reduce drug crime.

There are obviously differences in the civil legal frameworks of the US, in which interventions have been evaluated, and existing legislation in the UK. Little research on the use of property management procedures to tackle drug dealing in a UK context was identified during the course of this review.

A study of drug markets in deprived neighbourhoods in England and Wales touches on the issue of civil interventions ²⁶. The study examined community and police responses to drug markets. It found that civil procedures were hardly used in their case study areas. Reasons cited for this included:

• Gathering evidence for possession proceedings and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders could be time-consuming and expensive if professional witnesses were involved.

• Local authorities were reluctant to evict drug-dealing tenants when they may be required to re-house them again.

• Drug dealing tended to be treated as a criminal matter and civil measures were not invoked unless behaviour was considered to be severely antisocial.

The law in England and Wales is different from that in Scotland in these respects. A short summary of the current situation in Scotland with regard to anti-social behaviour legislation can be found in Annex B.

Another UK study refers to civil actions taken out against drug dealers in Southwark, although this was not its focus. These actions included enforcement of tenancy agreements against residents involved in drug dealing and injunctions to prevent known drug dealers entering the estate. One Housing Manager explained the appeal of civil actions in crime control terms:

"Of course, a close and co-ordinated relationship between the Police and the Housing Department is a prerequisite for a successful application for an injunctive order. The key point in pursuing a civil remedy is that the criminal courts require that a case be proved beyond all reasonable doubt whereas in the county court an order may be made on the balance of probabilities". ²⁷

Multi-agency initiatives may also focus on improving the ways in which intelligence is collected. In the COPS example above, efforts were made to engage with the community more effectively and this did result in an increase of calls made to the police and therefore the quantity of intelligence gathered.

It should be noted here that the above discussion focuses on multi-agency working with the ultimate goal of enhancing enforcement activity. However the goals of multi-agency working often extend beyond simple enforcement, and examples of such approaches will be provided in later chapters.

Situational crime prevention

Situational crime prevention refers to approaches taken by the police and other agencies to reduce the opportunities for crime in specific places. These approaches have often been used as part of a broader problem-oriented policing strategy. US evidence indicates ways in which environments may be made less conducive to disorder by the use of civil codes e.g. by requiring a landlord to repair or board up properties which are used for drug dealing or use. Situational crime prevention measures focus on the events and settings in which crimes occur. This involves identifying and then modifying the physical and social features of high-crime locations which support criminal activities.

A study of users in six markets in London identified situational factors that make sites more amenable to drug dealing. These are:

• Ease of access: by public transport.

• Places to 'hang out': important for sellers waiting for trade.

• Good meeting places and transaction sites: fast food restaurants, betting shops.

• Cash points outside banks and Post Office facilities for cashing Giro cheques.

• Access to equipment: syringes, water, citric acid or lemons.

• Good using sites: toilets in fast food restaurants.

• Access to phone boxes: to call sellers on arrival at market.

• Opportunities to raise money to buy drugs: e.g. through sex work.

The study suggests how these situational factors may be modified to make sites less attractive to buyers and sellers, although it notes that such measures would only tend to apply to street markets. Examples include:

• training 'place managers' to discourage drug activity; e.g. 'place managers' in fast food restaurants may be given awareness training about ways of discouraging drug dealing (such as discouraging long-stay customers who fail to make purchases).

• limiting access to phone boxes by putting them under direct surveillance of 'place managers' and barring incoming calls may make drug transactions more difficult.

However, some of these measures may be problematic, particularly those which examine how drug-using sites may be made less attractive to users (and by implication less attractive for dealers to operate in). Suggested modifications include:

• installing blue lighting in toilets (to make injection more difficult).

• restricting access to unused basements and stairwells.

• securing disused buildings.

• patrolling parks and gardens.

• improving lighting around using sites.

While such measures may well discourage drug dealers and users from sites, the study notes such measures may have unintended consequences. For example, the reduction in availability of drug-using equipment may simply lead to more dangerous injecting practices. Also, installing blue lighting in toilets to deter drug use may simply make injecting more hazardous, and displace and disperse drug users to other areas ²⁸. The potential health consequences of policing practices will be addressed more broadly in the discussion of harm reduction in Chapter 5.

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