Spatial Clustering of Illegal Drug Dealers: Swarming for Safety or Agglomeration for Profit

George Rengert
Temple University
Criminal Justice

There is a difference in opinion as to why illegal drug
dealers cluster in space. One opinion argues that just as
birds flock and fish swarm, illegal drug dealers agglomerate
in space for purposes of safety: police can not arrest them all. Another opinion is that illegal drug dealers cluster in space for economic reasons. The present analysis focuses on economic reasons for competitors to cluster spatially using location-allocation models and zero inflated poisson models to analyze spatial data of illegal drug dealers.

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