1. Monitoring drug-related crime in Europe: state of play
Teodora Groshkova
20 March 2018, Luxembourg
Working Group Meeting: Statistics on Crime and Criminal Justice

2. Outline EMCDDA supply monitoring framework New developments
Drug law offences
Drug-related homicide
Drug-related intimidation

3. Influence of operational priorities
Key challenges for measurement and analysis
‘Hidden’ phenomenon
Influence of operational priorities
Robustness and consistency of data collection methods
Issues of data comparability
Variability in coverage 3

4. Driving themes for supply indicator development
A dynamic and systematic approach in line with Council Conclusions (2013)
Focus on a minimum core data set for routine reporting to form a top-level European analysis
Data quality needs to improve incrementally over time
The system should be operationally coherent with, and add value to, national level activities (or it won’t work)
Identify opportunities presented by operational data collection for enhancing our understanding of drug supply patterns and trends

5. Internal consultation
What did we do?
Conceptual framework
for monitoring
supply
and
supply reduction
Literature review
Internal consultation
Critical examination
Key developments,
scope
Draft framework, approach to improvement
Expanded framework, concept paper
Late 2015
2-3 March 2017

6. Building on previous work
3 conceptual domains
Drug markets, drivers and facilitators
Processes & actors
Market dimensions
Drivers
Drug-related crime, harms & other consequences
Social and economic consequences
Environmental impacts
Drug supply reduction & responses

7. Supply-side monitoring system: EMCDDA framework
DRUG MARKETS, DRIVERS AND FACILITATORS
DRUG- RELATED CRIME, HARMS AND OTHER CONSE-QUENCES
DRUG SUPPLY REDUCTION AND RESPONSES

8. Thematic areas, domains and potential indicators

9. Approaches for improvement
Improve existing data collections
Expand the range and scope of the data collected
Improve analysis

10. Improve existing data collections Routine data (+15 years of monitoring)
Drug law offences
Seizures
Prices
Composition of tablets
Potency/Purity

11. Adding new data Greater resource implications Feasibility questions
New opportunities and challenges
Cultivation sites
Production facilities (labs)
Drug-related violence (homicides)

12. Open source information
Adding new sources
Darknet monitoring
Mechanisms to incorporate information on ad-hoc basis
Assess if essential data becomes suitable for routine reporting
Open source information

13. Drug law offences

14. DLO data collection pre-2015
Reitox network collect data on drug-law offences (ST11) in the EU, in most cases since 1995
Total number of reports for drug-law offences (criminal/non-criminal): offences and/or offenders
Breakdowns
- by general type of offence: drug use, drug production and drug-trafficking related
- by drug (cannabis, heroin, (crack-)cocaine, (meth)amphetamine, ecstasy, LSD and other drugs)

15. 2015 – implementation of revised ST11
Revised ST11 and new protocol prepared with support from Eurostat and Member States (2014)
A number of improvements to data collection instrument, most notably:
Revised DLO categorisation to allow discrimination between categories of supply, such as street-level and wholesale dealing;
ICCS-UNODC definitions adopted;
Number of offences (previously provided to Eurostat) must now be reported;
Option to report offences related to controlled precursors, NPS and substances under international control that are used as medicines;
Elaborated methodological data requirements to allow EMCDDA more confidence in the analyses performed with the data.

16. Current DLO data collection

17. Change in number of reported DLO categories (2014-16)

18. Revised ST11 implementation
2015
Parallel EMCDDA – EUROSTAT implementation of DLO data collection (revised ST11)
2016
Analysis of key differences between the two EU data submissions
Overall outcome of the comparison presented to EMCDDA HNFPs
2017
EMCDDA leading on intensive work for reconciling the two data collections
Positive response and initiative in a number of Member States

19. 2016 data collection – key observations
Full correspondence (n=1)
Reporting issues: definitions (n=3)
Units: ‘Offences’ vs ‘offenders’ (n=5)
Stage in the criminal process ≠ ‘initial’ (n=6)
Limited breakdown (n=7)
Data sources (n=9)

20. Drug-related homicide

21. The project 1. Sources 2. Role of drugs
Aim/Questions
Methodology
Scope
1. Sources 2. Role of drugs
3. Obstacles 4. Overcoming obstacles

22. Findings Light blue: Studied countries
Darker blue: Homicide specific data
Darkest blue: DRH data

23. Cause-of-death statistics
Obstacles
1: Fragmentation
Cause-of-death statistics
Court data
Police statistics
Open sources (media)

24. 2: Cross-national comparability
Obstacles
2: Cross-national comparability
‘Drug-related homicide’
Definition
Differential use of definition ‘homicide’

25. 3: Cross-national comparability
Obstacles
3: Cross-national comparability
‘Drug-related homicide’
Unit of analysis
Event <> Offender <> Victim
Specific output
E.g drug user <> drug intoxication
E.g dealer kills dealer <> user kills dealer
Definition
Differential use of definition ‘homicide’

26. Drug involvement in national homicides
Findings
Drug involvement in national homicides
Some figures
: Steady 10% of offenders is drug user
: Annual count of intoxicated offenders < 3
: 6% of homicides to obtain drugs or drug proceeds
: Intoxicated male and female offenders: resp. 22% and 19%
: Intoxicated offenders fluctuant: 40% (2006), 8% (2015)
: Avg. homicide suspects under influence of drugs: 18%
: In 8% dealer killed user or vice versa
: Intoxicated male and female offenders: resp. 21% and 13%

27. Overcoming obstacles Study drug-related homicide at European level
Coordination from European level Uniform definitions and coding
Build a consortium of data providers to implement a platform for the collection and analysis of data

28. Drug-related intimidation

29. Ireland case study Health Research Board
Action related to the topic in Reducing harm, supporting recovery: a health-led approach to drug and alcohol use in Ireland
EMCDDA technical support
Estimate and describe the harm of drug-related intimidation

30. Thank you
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