Spatial Nature and Geographical Characteristics of Drug Crime in Hungary

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article provides an analysis of the historical development of drug crime in Hungary. It uses concepts from environmental criminology regarding the spatial and geographic trends as regards enforcement intensity, crime concentration. This is an interesting contribution to the research on control policy implementation. Hungary is a transit country for drug trafficking and this effects the associated problems of organized crime, but limited research focuses on this.

Two hypotheses are proposed. I would recommend the authors reframe these as Research questions as no formal hypothesis testing is carried out. Data are criminal cases. The strengths and weaknesses of the data should be presented in more detail.

The article could benefit from a better structure. At present there is a section on “Results and discussion”, these should be separate. The references on international drug control policy are rather narrow. I recommend Babor et al. (2010) as a better broad reference.

Figure 2 on drug offenses is interesting. I recommend providing some descriptive statistics on averages for the period, minimum – max, etc., and – importantly – provide a per capita number. See Moeller (2021) on Enforcement intensity. This will give the readers a much better comparable data point to form an impression of how repressive or lenient drug control is in Hungary. This is attempted in section 4.4 but it is not clear what is going on. Present more information on drug offenses to 1,000 population; by year, and by region. This will make the study more valuable to international researchers.

Overall, this was an interesting article describing drug offending and organized crime in Hungary for a longer time period. Before it is suitable for publication, it needs some restructuring and tightening up. Towards the end, the article loses a bit of its focus with sections on Linear infrastructure and Crime scenes, etc. Delete some of this information and elaborate on the points noted above. I would recommend focusing on the period from 1989 onwards from which the data are better. The historical background is not so relevant for the analysis at hand.

Minor:

We do not need two decimals in table 1.

References:

Babor, T. F., Caulkins, J. P., Edwards, G., Fischer, B., Foxcroft, D. R., Humphreys, K., ... & Reuter, P. (2010). Drug policy and the public good.

Moeller, K. (2021). Enforcement intensity in Danish drug control, 1996–2017. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 27(4), 571-586.

Author Response

Dear Colleague,

We implemented the requested modifications and incorporated them into the study.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Colleague,

We implemented the requested modifications and incorporated them into the study.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors provided specific statistics to reflect on organized crime and drug trafficking in Hungary. The authors should reconsider their sub-questions (lines 72-77) alongside two main questions.

Before publishing, the authors should reconsider your format at the end of the section, including Supplementary Materials, Author Contributions, Funding, Institutional Review Board Statement, Informed Consent Statement, Data Availability Statement, Acknowledgments, and Conflict of Interests. Also, the authors should be checked the whole of language, numbers, and data in the paper. 

Author Response

Dear Editor,

We carried out the inspection and did all the tasks.

We have uploaded the modified study.

If anything else needs to be fixed, we are at your disposal.

Sincerely, Endre

Author Response File: Author Response.docx