Overt drug markets are often associated with violence and property crime, as well as lower quality of life for nearby residents. Despite the considerable strain these markets can place on communities, efforts to close them can disrupt the delicate relationship between those who live in these communities and the criminal justice agencies charged with protecting them. In 2010, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) funded Michigan State University (MSU) to train a cohort of seven jurisdictions to implement a community-based strategy that uses focused deterrence, community engagement, and incapacitation to reduce the crime and disorder associated with overt drug markets. The strategy was inspired by the High Point Drug Market Intervention and RAND was selected by the National Institute of Justice to evaluate these efforts. This process evaluation describes how well the seven sites adhered to the BJA model they were exposed to during the trainings, the barriers they encountered, and lessons learned from their experiences.
