By Albin Stenström, Felipe Estrada, Henrik Tham

Drug use was criminalized in Sweden in 1988 with the aim of reducing the number of consumers and drug-related risks and harms. Imprisonment was introduced into the penalty scale in 1993 to improve the legislation’s effectiveness. The criminalization has never been evaluated. Method: Goal-attainment evaluation based on a range of indicators from surveys, case-finding estimates, healthcare and cause-of-death data, and crime statistics. Comparative drug policy analysis is conducted with other Nordic countries. Results: The criminalization is not followed by a reduced or more expensive drug supply, reduced consumption levels, problematic drug use or healthcare needs, or fewer drug-related deaths. Most of the indicators instead show the opposite. Control costs are high, and trends are no better than those of other Nordic countries, despite Sweden’s more repressive drug policy. Conclusion: Criminalization emerges as an ineffective, expensive, and harmful means of dealing with the drug problem.

International Journal of Drug Policy Volume 133, November 2024, 104573

By Caitlin Hughes, Shann Hulme and Alison Ritter

In illicit drug markets, the price and purity of drugs change frequently. While it is well known that purity-adjusted price affects drug use, impacts on other outcomes are less clear. This rapid review examines the relationship between price, purity and seven population level measures of drug-related harm and any differences across three drug types. With a few exceptions, it found an inverse relationship between purity-adjusted price and drug-related harm, with higher purity-adjusted price associated with less drug-related harm, and lower purity-adjusted price associated with increased harm. This shows the value of price and purity data for predicting drug market impacts and the importance of improving price and purity data collection and analyses, particularly in Australia.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 598. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology 2020. 26p.

By Anthony Morgan

This report examines the effect of money laundering on the harm associated with organised crime by linking data on organised crime groups known to law enforcement, and data on suspicious transactions reported to the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC). This study is the first step in assessing the social and economic harms associated with money laundering and terrorism financing in Australia.

Key Findings

• Suspicious matter reports captured a high proportion of individuals and groups known by law enforcement to be involved in organised crime.

• Known organised crime groups accounted for a very small proportion of suspicious matter reports.

• The amount of money laundered by groups varied according to where they laundered their funds and whether they had professional facilitators.

• The presence and amount of money laundering was consistently associated with an increase in recorded crime-related harm and the probability of organised crime.

• Evidence indicates that the laundering of illicit funds preceded increases in crime-related harm.

Consultancy Report Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2024. 73p.

By John K. Roman,  Anthony Washburn,  Sofia Rodriguez; Caterina G. Roman, .; Elena I. Navarro; Jesse T. Brey; Benjamin M. Reist

The HAVEN Project (Harms After Victimization: Experience and Needs) was launched in 2020 by researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago and Temple University with support from the National Institute of Justice1 to address three gaps in the violence literature. First, the project was designed to update the pioneering 1996 NIJ study, Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look using data, measurement and analytic tools that were not available thirty years ago, and that is the subject of this report2. In the same spirit, the project developed an expanded taxonomy of harms from victimization and develops a survey instrument and methodology to facilitate the collection of self-reported data on the harms from violent victimization across multiple dimensions that are commonly excluded from violent crime harms measurement. Finally, advances in criminology have included a growing reliance on causal models to estimate the effectiveness of crime and justice interventions and reforms: the HAVEN project introduced a regression-based cost-benefit model that can be integrated into causal models3  

Chicago: NORC, 2023. 37p.