SCHEDULING CRACKDOWNS ON ILLICIT DRUG MARKETS

This paper presents an analytical approach for scheduling crackdowns o n street-corner drug markets. The crackdown scheduling problem is show n to be NP-complete. We then provide efficient optimal algorithms for several special cases and approximation algorithms for the general cas e, These results show that the optimal strategy is to give priority to markets that take longer to bring down and which require low levels o f post-crackdown maintenance. The results are then extended to incorpo rate dealer displacement between drug markets.