Drugs And Crime

16 Pages 4087 Words

n (Goldstein, 1985); however, we have not examined it here.
There is a clear association between illicit drug use and property crime. As will be discussed below, there is a large degree of overlap between those using illicit drugs and those who are involved in crime, with a pool of people who both use drugs and offend. But this link can arise in several ways (see Coid et al., 2000; Best et al., 2000; Walters, 1998, for fuller discussions):
· Illicit drug use may lead to other forms of crime, e.g. to provide money to buy drugs or as a result of the dis-inhibiting effects of some drugs
· Crime may lead to drug use e.g. providing the money and the contacts to buy drugs or serving as a palliative for coping with the stresses of a chaotic, criminal lifestyle.
· There could be a more complex interaction, whereby crime facilitates drug use, and drug use prompts other forms of crime.
· There may be an association arising from a shared common cause - but no causal link at all between offending and drug use.
Surveys of offenders' health show that they are much more likely to smoke nicotine than the general population (eg Singleton et al., 1999). No one would seriously argue that smoking causes crime, however, or that crime causes smoking. Rather, smoking and crime are likely to share some causal roots without themselves being causally related. The same is likely to be true of some links between illicit drug use and crime. For example, economic deprivation, inconsistent parenting, low educational attainment and limited employment prospects are risk factors not only for chaotic or dependent drug use but also for heavy involvement in crime. Each of these explanations will apply to some people. In some cases problem drug use - dependence on drugs such as heroin, crack/cocaine or amphetamines, or heavy binge use of these drugs - does trigger theft as a means of fund raising. Others would never have become drug-dependent if cr...