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29 January 2008

How networks are used to fight the overt drug market in High Point, NC

I recently attended a conference of innovations in government co-sponsored by the Ash Institute in The Hague where the following U.S. case was presented. The case was not discussed from a social networks perspective but should be interesting to those with an interest in the matter as well as the law enforcement community.

Overt drug-markets are an issue for many communities. The police usually responds by conducting crackdowns and drug sweeps. Many times drug trafficking in those neighborhoods continued. In addition, the police struggled maintaining a positive relationship with the lawful residents living in those areas. The following paragraphs will describe the actions taken in the city of High Point, NC.
 
Determined to make a difference, the executive staff of the High Point PD met with Prof. Kennedy (formerly Harvard U), to discuss alternative strategies. Kennedy proposed the concept of law enforcement and partnership, which would comprehensively dissuade street level drug dealers from open-air markets. Community networks are a core success factor. Though the strategy acts on multiple levels as a deterrent for those impacting the community, leaving offenders with little choice but to modify their behavior.

The Overt Drug Market Strategy has eleven key elements:

1) mapping, to determine where the most serious offenses are concentrated (which follows the idea of CompStat)
2) mobilizing commitment of community through public meetings to identify and inform community stakeholders (thereby lowering the transaction costs of acquiring information)
3) surveying by police and probation officers to identify those involved in street drug dealing; 
4) formal identification of offenders and their areas of activity; 
5) incident review; 
6) undercover investigation of each location and offender; 
7) contact with the offender’s family to invite them to join law enforcement in asking offenders to quit; 
8) the call‐in, face to face call between offenders, law enforcement and the community 9) a deadline is issued for three days after the call in for offenders to quit dealing; 
10) enforcement; and 
11) follow‐up visits about a month after the call‐in to ensure that former offenders are being given the help to get out of their situation.
  
The strategy identifies or selects neighborhoods for implementation based on an intense analysis of crime data, followed by interviewing patrol officers, street narcotics officers and community members for their list of "persons of interest". This take at least three months. To date, 40 offenders have been called-in or notified for the Overt Drug Market Strategy in three neighborhoods.

The biggest obstacle for the strategy is the lack of employment opportunities for notified offenders. Jobs are scarce across the board, and most street level drug offenders have only minimal qualifications. Working in collaboration with local service providers, agencies are trying to offer personalized support for the former offenders. Furthermore, this strategy only targets the supply side, not the consumption side.
 
The single most important achievment of the strategy has been the collapse of the drug markets in the neighborhoods. Rush hour traffic jams caused by people buying drugs on their way home have disappeared.

The 1998 institution of the violent offender notification process, on which the Overt Drug Market Strategy is based, resulted in consistent reductions in High Point's violent crime rate as it decreased 47% from 1302 in 1997 to 681 in 2005. In the two years following the call-in in the West End neighborhood, the pilot project, crime of all kinds remained more than 25% lower than before the strategy implementation. Citywide, violent crime decreased 20% in that same two years.

This case certainly supports Kasadra's and Janowitz's (1974) notion that ones attachment to a community produces a willingness to its maintenance through individual or collective action. Though, in this case, a public body like law enforcement agencies seem to play an important part in activating (or may be reactivating) the sense of moral responsibility and connectedness of people in those neighborhoods.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at January 29, 2008 6:00 PM

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