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Examining ethnic disparities in enforced drug testing and body searches: an analysis of youth suspected of minor drug offenses
Malmö University, Faculty of Health and Society (HS), Department of Criminology (KR).ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9312-6179
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Ethnic disparities in drug law enforcement have been noted in several previous studies investigating arrest rates, search rates, and hit-rates. Evidence also suggests that ethnic disparities tend to increase with restrictive drug law enforcement that focuses on minor drug offenses. The Swedish drug policy has a strong focus on drug use and possession offenses, where the enforcement of those offenses has increased over time. The targeted population is decreasing in age. Using police data on the success rates of enforced drug tests and body searches associated with suspicion of drug offenses among youth, this study explores both ethnic differences in exposure to enforced drug tests and ethnic disparities in the hit rates of drug tests and body searches among youth aged 15-20. The results suggest that youth exposed to enforced drug tests are more likely to be born outside Europe, be male, and have unemployed fathers. Results from the hit-rate test show that youth born outside Europe are more likely than youth born in Sweden to be body searched and drug tested with a negative result when controls are included for socioeconomic status, gender, repeat drug offending, and neighborhood drug crime characteristics. The results are discussed in the light of previous research and theoretical approaches to ethnic disparities in drug enforcement

National Category
Law and Society
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-64825OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-64825DiVA, id: diva2:1824043
Available from: 2024-01-04 Created: 2024-01-04 Last updated: 2024-01-05Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Drug policing of youth: examining pre- and post-stop conditions and outcomes
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Drug policing of youth: examining pre- and post-stop conditions and outcomes
2023 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Given the strong focus on minor drug offenses in Swedish drug control policy and the risk of disparate drug enforcement that may follow from such policies, this thesis explores drug enforcement and the use of coercive measures (enforced drug tests and body searches) towards youths aged 15-20 years. The first study focuses on the circumstances of the detection of minor drug offenses, the grounds for suspicion and use of coercive measures. The second study explores ethnic disparities in exposure to drug tests, as well as ethnic disparities in relation to hitrates for drug tests and body searches. The results show that about one-third of the minor drug situations were detected in a reactive policing manner, and approximately 30-40 percent were detected in association with other offenses. The findings suggest that the grounds for enforcing drug tests and body searches often were based on subjective cues. Results from the second study show that youths subjected to a drug test were male, born outside Europe, and had unemployed fathers to a significantly greater extent than the drug-using youths in the school survey. Additionally, youths born outside Europe were more likely than youths born in Sweden to be submitted to coercive measures that produced a negative result. This finding was dependent on the definition of ethnic background that was employed. The findings suggest that future research should investigate a number of pre- and post-stop conditions and outcomes. Research on pre-stop conditions should further explore: 1) the distribution of "criminal" signs between different sociodemographic groups and their probability for a hit, 2) the importance of concurrent offending for the detection of drug offenses, and 3) the nature of drug use, transactions, and dealing in association with the risk for suspicion. Research on post-stop conditions and outcomes should explore: 1) ethnic disparities in hitrates of body searches and drug tests with more detailed data on ethnic background (specific region-based vulnerabilities), and 2) neighborhood effects on searches and drug tests, including hit-rates, both on an individual level and a neighborhood level. Research on various forms of police bias in drug enforcement should integrate both neighborhood- and individual-level processes in relation to pre-stop and post-stop conditions and outcomes to understand the mechanisms behind ethnic disparities. Finally, future research should focus on the "gender gap" found in this study and previous studies on drug enforcement.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Malmö: Malmö University Press, 2023. p. 77
Series
FoU-rapport, ISSN 1650-2337 ; 2023:3
National Category
Other Social Sciences
Research subject
Criminology
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-64823 (URN)10.24834/isbn.9789178774272 (DOI)978-91-7877-426-5 (ISBN)978-91-7877-427-2 (ISBN)
Presentation
2024-01-19, U206, Jan Waldenströmsgata 25, 10:15 (Swedish)
Supervisors
Note

Paper II in dissertation as manuscript

Available from: 2024-01-04 Created: 2024-01-03 Last updated: 2024-02-29Bibliographically approved

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Egnell, Susanne

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