Restrictive Deterrence in Drug Offenses: A Systematic Review and Meta-Synthesis of Mixed Studies

Deterrence by punishment aims to prevent a crime; however, it is not always successful. Restrictive deterrence explains the continuous criminal activities that occur despite deterrence; offenders enact various strategies to avoid detection, which is more typical among drug offenders given that they have a high frequency of offending and exposure to punishment. This systematic review provides an in-depth understanding of restrictive deterrence of drug offenders. Two prominent themes, “restrictive deterrence strategy” and “deterrability and restrictive deterrence,” depict drug offenders' restrictive deterrence and effectively fit within the certainty–severity framework of punishment. Future studies should investigate restrictive deterrence strategies in the after-arrest context, the facilitative effect of perception of risk on strategy development, and facilitators or inhibitors affecting the diffusion of restrictive deterrence strategies.

DP 0256 - Judicial attitudes under shifting jurisprudence: evidence from Brazil's new drug law of 2006

This paper exploits the diversity of panels at the court of appeals in the state of São Paulo to address the role of career backgrounds and ideology in shaping the response of judicial decisions to a major shift in jurisprudence on drug offenses. The Brazilian constitution reserves 80% of the seats in appellate courts to career judges, 10% to lawyers and 10% to prosecutors. In practice however, vacancies in panels coupled with backlogs have significantly increased participation of judges sitting by designation in appellate panels - who acted as rapporteurs in as much as 14% of all criminal appeals in São Paulo, between 2009-2013. Former lawyers and prosecutors are appointed by the state governor after nomination processes at the bar association and at the ministerial office. Judges sitting by designation are chosen at the discretion of the court’s highest council and do not retain prerogatives of tenured appellate judges and are typically hired with the purpose of reducing backlogs. Their performance affects their chances of being promoted to the court of appeals, relatively to similar judges that have not been designated. Based on a large dataset of criminal appeals related to drug offenses in the State São Paulo, Brazil, this study exploits the exogenous assignment of cases to rapporteurs, to identify the causal effects of career backgrounds on the response of appellate judges to a major shift in drug jurisprudence, which revoked the prohibition of conversion of confinement punishment in drug offenses introduced by the new drug law of 2006. Estimates of treatment-effects, conditional on case characteristics and panel-specific fixed-effects, confirm that career judges respond favorably to defendants, in line with the jurisprudence shift. Former prosecutors react against the shift, responding unfavorably to defendants. Former lawyers tend to exhibit a mixed behavior, weighing in their preferences as well as strategically favoring predominant “law and order” views. Finally sitting judges behave in a diffident fashion but also favoring prosecution.

Overview of State Sentencing Commissions’ Drug Data Reporting Practices

Data are essential for good sentencing policy. It is impossible to act intelligently without knowing what is happening on the ground. This is especially true with drug offenses, which drive a significant portion of prosecutions and sentences every year. Accessible, high-quality drug-conviction and sentencing data enable sentencing commissions and legislatures to act decisively on the basis of reason and not anecdotes. Commissions can play a vital role in understanding the decades-old war on drugs and charting a path for the future. This article provides an overview of the drug data that state sentencing commissions are providing to the public. Each state-specific snapshot offers a brief explanation of the strengths and challenges of that commission’s approach to communicating drug data.

Theoretical and practical aspects of preventive work in the fight against drug addiction

The aim of the work is to study the theoretical and practical aspects of the emergence of drug addiction, types of preventive work in the fight against drug addiction, the peculiarities of its spread among adolescents. An assessment of the development of the drug situation in the Tambov Region for 2019 is given. According to the totality of criteria, the situation in the region is tense. The most difficult state is noted according to the following criteria: the proportion of drug-related crimes in the total number of registered criminal acts (“pre-crisis”); involvement of drug users in drug trafficking (“heavy”); criminality of drug addiction (“satisfactory”); the proportion of persons convicted of drug-related crimes in the total number of convicted persons (“heavy”); the proportion of young people in the total number of persons convicted of drug offenses (“tense”). The drug market of the Tambov Region is represented by synthetic drugs and their analogues, drugs of the cannabis group (marijuana, hashish), heroin. The main methods of the preventive fight against drug addiction in the Tambov Region are listed. Presumptive trends in drug trafficking associated with the use of “non-contact” methods of selling drugs, further merging of drug-related crime with cybercrime, involvement of non-drug users in drug trafficking, as well as an increase in the number of drug addicts among minors are indicated.