Illusions clouding decision-making: how the justice system fails to understand the illicit drug market

Luiz Guilherme Mendes de Paiva and Juliana de Oliveira Carlos

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper reviews some of the main research on drug law enforcement in Brazil since the 2006 Drug Law came into force, noting a clear and constant pattern of police and judicial focus directed at retail drug trafficking, decisively impacting current incarceration rates. It then examines the lack of understanding of the actual functioning of illicit drug markets by the criminal justice system, leading to judicial decisions not only ineffective for its declared purposes, but also counterproductive in terms of controlling illicit economies.

Keywords: illicit economies; criminal justice system; prisons; illicit drug markets; sentencing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L81 N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 6 pages
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
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Published in Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, June, 2019, 1(2), pp. 220-225. ISSN: 2516-7227

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:101205

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