Measuring the impact of a targeted law enforcement initiative on drug sales

Law enforcement focused on drug sales with special intensity in particular during the 1980s and 1990s because of their impact on community decline and violence. This study considered the impact and implications of one particular law enforcement intervention, the establishment of “drug free zones” in Portland, Oregon. The analysis of possible effects of the drug free zone strategy employed multiple methods including mapping and multilevel analytic techniques. Together, these methods were employed to identify hypothesized impacts of the drug free zone intervention, in the context of the effects of temporal shifts and community characteristics, on drug sales arrests. Findings from the research suggested that future consideration be given to the development of meaningful measures of the relationship between drug free zone status and law enforcement practices. Findings also shed light upon the relative importance of ecological predictors of crime at the block group level.