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Cheaper drugs, and thus less crime: the crime drop’s “Philosopher’s Stone”?

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Notes

  1. Several commentators correctly note that irony is among the major themes of our paper that attributes good outcomes to the backlash from failed “War On Drugs” strategies. Our original conference paper that led to this current publication was intended largely as a prank. First, our argument is very much intended to upset the applecart of American criminology, so much of which is devoted simultaneously to adulation of law enforcement, and to ignoring the subjectivity of those who violate laws. Second, research intended to explore our hypothesis is unlikely to be funded by the two largest US funders of drugs/crime research. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, by statute, may only fund research which seeks to show the harms of currently illicit substances. The National Institute of Justice seldom funds research on the positive effects of law enforcement failure. The fact that our argument also appears to be correct provides additional surplus value.

  2. We note that those who accuse others of being “careless,” “slack,” and “negligent” ought to be careful themselves. It is impressive indeed that Green’s cited 1994 and 2000 BJS sources are able to reveal what portion of crime was “drug related” in 2002 and 2004 (Green 2016, Table 1).

  3. Greenberg points to this in his article. He asked us to send our data sets and our Stata code, which we did. He provided additional analysis and concludes that the new results are consistent with our “suggestion that changes in New York’s drug markets have been important determinants of changes in its crime rates” (Greenberg 2016), but adds a cautionary message that bivariate relationships can be misleading. Thus, Greenberg calls for further research “for other offenses, other cities, and other variables” (Greenberg 2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vermont CARES, Burlington, VT, USA

    Travis Wendel

  2. Department of Economics, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA

    Geert Dhondt & Jay Hamilton

  3. Department of Anthropology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA

    Ric Curtis

Authors
  1. Travis Wendel
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  2. Geert Dhondt
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  3. Ric Curtis
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  4. Jay Hamilton
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Correspondence to Travis Wendel.

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Wendel, T., Dhondt, G., Curtis, R. et al. Cheaper drugs, and thus less crime: the crime drop’s “Philosopher’s Stone”?. Dialect Anthropol 40, 385–393 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-016-9442-5

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