On a summer afternoon in the late 1990s in New York City’s Tompkins Square Park, sociologist Bruce Western and his colleague Katherine Beckett engaged in a conversation that would change the course of their research. At the time, Western studied the social programs of European welfare states. Against the backdrop of a park that had seen a surge in drug dealing and homeless encampment in the 198...

Routine activity theory identifi es the routine activities of individuals as important to understanding the convergence of elements necessary for a crime to occur. Two recent studies have demonstrated how geographically aware agent-based models can be used to provide a virtual rather than empirical laboratory for testing theory. Those studies trace the development of three versions of a basic s...

Young people are overrepresented as both victims and perpetrators of violence. Indeed, some commentators have suggested that recent cohorts of youth have been composed of "superpredators" who have little regard for human life. The evidence, however, suggests that other factors are responsible for recent increases in youth gun violence. This article analyzes the extent and causes of youth violen...

BACKGROUND In the wake of collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asia has transformed into a key hub along the Afghan opiates trafficking routes. Around 30 percent of the heroin manufactured in Afghanistan is estimated to be smuggled through Central Asian republics in its way to booming drug markets in Russia and Eastern Europe. METHODS Building upon available evidence and extensive fieldwork ...

BACKGROUND Street-involved youth are known to be an economically vulnerable population that commonly resorts to risky activities such as drug dealing to generate income. While incarceration is common among people who use illicit drugs and associated with increased economic vulnerability, interventions among this population remain inadequate. Although previous research has documented the role of...

BACKGROUND Dread Pirate Roberts, founder of the first cryptomarket for illicit drugs named Silk Road, articulated libertarian political motives for his ventures. Previous research argues that there is a significant political component present or involved in cryptomarket drug dealing which is specifically libertarian. The aim of the paper is to investigate the prevalence of political discourses ...