Drug-Related Crime in the Russian Federation: Modern Statistical Patterns

The authors present a statistical analysis of drug trafficking crimes in the Russian Federation. It is established that in the last five years the drug-related situation in Russia has been stable and under control, but there was a trend for an incremental increase of the growth rate of the total number of drug-related crimes in 2023. Against this background, there is a decrease in the growth rate for the registered grave drug-related crimes (87,8 %) and an increase for especially grave crimes (109,4 %), as well as those of considerable (103,7 %) and very large size (108,1 %). A trend for the growing number of very grave crimes is explained by increased activities of the law enforcement bodies aimed at preventing these crimes. Regional trends of drug-related crimes vary little compared to the general Russian trends, which highlights the phenomenon of emergence in the sphere of illegal drug trade — individual fluctuations of average growth rates of the number of grave drug-related crime in the subjects of the Russian Federation have very little impact on the general Russian trend for the decrease in the average growth rate of the number of registered crimes of this category. The authors state the existence of a proportionate correlation between low growth rates of confiscated narcotics and a negative growth rate of the general number of registered drug-related crimes. The assessment of the significance of the variations in the structure of drug-related crimes allowed the authors to identify a low level of differences for grave and very grave drug-related crimes. It is stated that considerable social-economic, nature-climate, and cultural-demographic diversity of the region influences the level of various categories of registered drug-related crimes. It is concluded that regional specifics of drug-related crimes reflect the dynamics of Russian indices, but they are more varied and subject to structural criminologically relevant changes.