Street-level research on street-level interventions among drug users: Commentary on papers by Frank et al., Hayashi et al., Small et al., and Domanico and Malta

摘要

The research collected in these four papers does not form a single comparative study across multiple nations. Yet, reading these works together, one cannot help but notice a great consistency among the issues faced by each of the community-based initiatives supporting and protecting drug users even across such different social and political contexts. As well, there are clear trends in the relations between the organizations that emerge from these communities and the state and city agencies with which they most interact. For all of the differences in public health and criminal justice policies, these street-level organizations appear to be in the same boat, trying to address similar problems. What political processes, strategies, and constraints do these similarities reveal?