Criminal Arrests and the Opioid Epidemic: An Investigation into the Spatial and Social Spillover of Opioid Overdoses in Chicago

Academics and policy makers have long questioned the role of criminal justice deterrence as an effective strategy to combat opioid overdoses. While the enforcement of drug policy via arrests takes opioid users and sellers off the streets, it is unclear the extent to which it effectively deters the misuse of opioids within a community, lowering opioid overdose rates. Moreover, arrests for the possession and manufacturing/distribution of opioids in one community may also simply displace opioid misuse, forcing users and suppliers to accommodate by going to other communities. This study investigates the role of criminal justice deterrence practices, i.e., opioid arrests, in effectively deterring opioid overdoses, paying particular attention to whether arrests in spatially proximate or socially connected communities lead to the diffusion or deterrence of opioid overdoses in a local community. Combining data from the Cook County medical examiner, emergency medical services information, and arrest reports with commuting statistics for Chicago’s 77 community areas between 2016 and 2019, this study uses fixed effects spatial autoregressive models with spatial lags to predict community-level opioid overdose rates. We find evidence for the displacement of crime as well as the diffusion of crime benefits. Arrests for heroin and possession increase the total overdose rate in local and spatially proximate communities. Arrests for the manufacturing and distribution of synthetic narcotics displaces fatal overdoses into socially connected communities, while lowering the total overdose rate in the local community. However, arrests for the manufacturing and distribution of heroin helps to deter overdoses in socially connected communities while simultaneously increasing overdoses in the local community. Thus, findings suggest complex spatial and social spillover mechanisms of displacement and deterrence, dependent on the crime and overdose rate investigated. These results have important implications for understanding the effectiveness of criminal justice policies in deterring opioid misuse.