The current study examines the effect of participation in the High Point Drug Market Intervention (DMI) on re-offending post intervention. The DMI is a program that attempts to eliminate overt open-air drug markets through a focused deterrence approach. This approach involves targeting the individuals driving the crime problem in a targeted area, and enhancing the threat of criminal sanctions while at the same time offering help from the community and social service providers. By increasing the perceived likelihood and severity of the sanctions for those most likely to be involved in committing crimes in the area, it is expected that the offenders' perceptions of risk will be altered and they will be deterred from offending. Using survival analysis to compare the recidivism patterns of participants in the program relative to those of an equivalent comparison group, this dissertation examines the DMI's deterrent effect on the offenders targeted to participate in the program. While studies on the DMI have found it to have a positive crime-control effect in the communities where it is implemented, participant outcomes at the individual level have not been examined. This study addresses this gap in the literature by providing a more complete understanding of the DMI's impact on the offenders targeted to participate in the program. The findings suggest that offenders who participated in the DMI were arrested faster and were at greater risk of arrest for prohibited offenses than those in the comparison group. While these results are not consistent with what was hypothesized, they may indicate success for the law enforcement follow-up component of the intervention. The findings also suggest that there was no difference in time to re-arrest and risk of re-arrest between the DMI and comparison group for drug offenses and any offense. Overall, the findings indicate that participation in the DMI did not have a deterrent effect on the targeted offenders. Future research should focus on components of the intervention that are thought to influence offender behavior such as social services, family involvement, enforcement consequences, the call-in process, and deterrence message to determine if they are having the expected affect on the targeted offenders.
Read
