Crime falls after Injecting Centre opens

The Medically Supervised Injection Centre (MSIC) in Kings Cross has not caused increases in robbery, property crime or drug offences in Kings Cross, according to a monitoring report by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR).

The (MSIC) opened in Kings Cross in May 2001.

The study examined trends in robbery, property crime and drug offences recorded by NSW Police between January 1999 and March 2010 to determine whether there had been any local increases. The results were compared to the rest of Sydney City.

With a few minor exceptions the incidence of robbery and property offences had fallen in the Kings Cross Local Area Command since 2001. This pattern is consistent with the rest of Sydney.

Spatial analyses were used to determine whether drug arrests were concentrated around the MSIC site. Incidents of possession and dealing of narcotics, cocaine and amphetamines were geocoded and mapped with the results inferred by descriptive statistics and visual inspection.

The spatial analyses showed no pattern of increased drug offences around the MSIC.

Of the six drug offences considered, five have been stable in Kings Cross since 2001. The exception was cocaine possession which increased in both Kings Cross and the rest of Sydney.

by Michael Gormly

COMMENT:

The BOCSAR study triggered debate from opponents of the Centre. Right-wing Christian-linked group Drug Free Australia sent a brief to Parliamentarians arguing that the BOCSAR report ignored the use of sniffer dogs, concentrated in Kings Cross. This would cause a fall in crime. However the brief assumed sniffer dogs were used daily when in fact they are more typically deployed a couple of times a week. The brief claimed an 80 percent reduction in ambulance callouts in the Cross area was due not to treating overdoses at the MSIC but to sniffer dogs displacing crime to Darlinghurst. However, since Oxford Street is also heavily targeted by the dogs, this argument is weak. The brief does not address the possibility that increased policing in an area might increase arrests, a feasible argument in the light of a steady 200 or so injections per day being supervised at the Centre, suggesting that the dog policing had not reduced drug use.

The brief challenged the BOCSAR conclusion that the Centre had not created a ‘honeypot effect’. However such arguments ignore that there was already a ‘honeypot’ in the area before the Centre, around several unofficial and unsupervised ‘shooting galleries’.