Introduction: Drug market related violence has plagued Sweden in the last decade and has geographically been linked to open drug scenes, ODSs. Surveys have been used to identify ODSs in local police districts in Stockholm County since 2017. The present study analyzes how ODSs and hot spots of police-reported crime relate to geographical indicators of systemic drug market violence.

Method: Drug hot spots are identified using clustering methods. Drug hot spots and ODSs are then both geographically matched with markers for organized crime to analyze the extent to which they can serve as geographical markers for systemic drug market related violence. The markers for organized crime employed are shootings and organized crime related activities described in court cases that include encrypted phone texts.

Results: Our findings suggest that drug hot spots are a rather weak predictor of systemic drug market related violence, whereas ODSs function reasonably well, particularly in the case of ODSs in areas with an established presence of criminal networks.

Conclusion: Measuring drug market locations is complex, but drug market related violence can be understood geographically by linking typical gang-related crimes to places with open drug scenes.