NYC Overdose Prevention Centers Were Not Linked to Higher Crime in Initial Study
A 2023 JAMA Network Open study found no evidence that New York City’s first publicly recognized overdose prevention centers were associated with increased crime or disorder during their first year of operation.
The centers, operated by OnPoint NYC, opened in East Harlem and Washington Heights on November 30, 2021. They allow people to consume previously obtained drugs under the supervision of trained staff who can respond to overdoses and connect visitors with health and social services.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and the University of Connecticut examined police, emergency-call, and quality-of-life data from January 2019 through December 2022. They compared areas surrounding the two overdose prevention centers with neighborhoods near 17 syringe service programs that did not provide supervised consumption services.
The analysis did not find significant increases in reported violent or property crime near the overdose prevention centers. In the broader surrounding neighborhoods, crime-related 911 calls declined by about 16% relative to the comparison areas, while calls involving medical emergencies declined by about 33%. The researchers found no significant change in nuisance-related 311 calls.
Police enforcement also changed after the centers opened. Arrests for drug possession fell by about 83% in the immediate vicinity of the centers, while weapons-possession arrests declined by about 57%. In the wider surrounding areas, drug and weapons arrests fell by roughly 75% and 70%, respectively. These findings describe changes in enforcement activity; they do not establish that the centers caused the declines.
The study was observational rather than a randomized experiment, and it covered only two locations over a relatively short period. Its findings therefore cannot prove that overdose prevention centers will never affect crime or disorder in other places or over a longer time. They do, however, challenge the claim that opening such centers inevitably produces more neighborhood crime.
The research also helps separate two questions that are often treated as one: whether overdose prevention centers save lives and whether they affect public safety. A separate study of the centers’ first two months reported that staff intervened in 125 potentially fatal overdoses, with no deaths occurring at the sites during that period. The study is available through PubMed.
Overdose prevention centers are one part of a broader harm-reduction system that can include naloxone distribution, syringe services, treatment referrals, and medical care. New York City’s Department of Health guidance on alcohol and drug-use services describes the city’s overdose prevention and harm-reduction resources.
The policy remains controversial, in part because supervised consumption involves illicit drug use and raises unresolved legal and political questions in the United States. The New York findings do not settle those debates, but they provide early evidence that public-safety concerns should be evaluated with data rather than assumed. The researchers concluded that expanding overdose prevention centers may be possible without producing negative crime or disorder outcomes, while noting that longer-term research is still needed.
