Public commentary has offered mixed opinion on the likely impact of COVID-19 restrictions on drug-related offending. On the one hand, it is argued that drug users – and the drug markets in which they interact – may have become the incidental targets of law enforcement as police seek to enforce social distancing regulations by focusing their efforts on street-level pedestrian activity or open-air gatherings. On the other, interstate border closures and restrictions on person and freight traffic are thought to have interrupted illicit drug supply chains, temporarily reducing or displacing market activity at the street level and thus reducing police detections of drug users. In this study, we extend current analyses of crime during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore how the rate of police detection for drug possession and other drug-related offences has changed. Using crime data from the Australian state of Queensland, we use Auto-Regressive Integrated and Moving Average time series modelling techniques to explore historical trends and their dynamic forecasts. We then compare actual offence rates for March through June to identify any statistically significant changes. We find that reported drug offences significantly vary across time and location highlighting that the impact of COVID-19 is not universal across Queensland. Thus, the significant heterogeneity in local drug market dynamics that has elsewhere been documented remains even in a major crisis with significant changes in policing activity and resource allocation. Our analysis has significant import for criminal justice practitioners in further understanding drug market dynamics and drug-related offending during COVID-19 restrictions.

对于COVID-19限制对与毒品有关的犯罪行为可能产生的影响，公众评论意见不一。一方面，有人认为吸毒者及其互动的毒品市场可能已经成为执法的附带目标，因为警察试图通过将注意力集中在街头行人活动或开放上来努力执行社会疏散规定。空气聚会。另一方面，人们认为州际边境的关闭以及对人员和货运的限制打断了非法毒品供应链，暂时减少或取代了街头的市场活动，从而减少了警方对毒品使用者的侦查。在这项研究中，我们扩展了当前在COVID-19大流行期间的犯罪分析，以探讨警察对毒品拥有和其他与毒品有关的犯罪的侦查率如何变化。利用来自澳大利亚昆士兰州的犯罪数据，我们使用自回归综合和移动平均时间序列建模技术来探索历史趋势及其动态预测。然后，我们比较3月到6月的实际犯罪率，以发现任何具有统计意义的变化。我们发现，所报告的毒品犯罪在时间和地点之间存在显着差异，这突显了COVID-19的影响在昆士兰州并不普遍。因此，即使在重大警务活动，警务活动和资源分配发生重大变化的情况下，本地毒品市场动态中的明显异质性仍然存在。