The Local Geography of Retail Drug-Dealing: Patterns, Processes and Urban Policy Recommendations

This study examines the geographical patterns and processes of retail drug dealing and offers elements for a preliminary discussion of policy recommendations and territorial strategies for its effective eradication. The base information for this study, provided by the Public Security Secretariat in the Federal District in Mexico City, comprises the number of those arrested for retail drug-dealing between 2005 and 2007. The geographical analysis focuses on the neighborhoods and districts of delegacion Cuauhtemoc. A variety of spatial and aspatial statistical methods were used. The hotspots where police intervention would significantly reduce the occurrence of this crime were detected and reported. The study also found that since retail drug-dealing is a geographically concentrated, largely immobile crime, at least in the short term, there is very little likelihood of the spread or relocation (cockroach effect) of points of sale towards adjoining neighborhoods in the same borough. Adapted from the source document.