Does Drug Use Cause Crime?

Lina Kudriavcevaite

Jan 2018 · GRIN Verlag

About this ebook

Academic Paper from the year 2010 in the subject Law - Criminal process, Criminology, Law Enforcement, grade: 1, University of Hull, language: English, abstract: The drug problem, according to Carrabine et al., is a highly complex subject in which issues of international politics, the legacy of history and the subcultures of use, as well as the economics of drug markets, law enforcement and provision of treatment services all interact. 'The concepts of 'drug' and 'drug dependence' are produced by socially institutionalised definitions. These definitions are based on culture, history, judgement and norms grounded in an elliptic or explicit rhetoric'. Importantly, substance misuse is not only a social, but also a health problem. Although drug use is frequently offered as an explanation for crime, the relationship between drug use and criminal activity is complex and rarely straightforward. In order to get closer to the nature and extent of the drug problem, academics and practitioners should combine data from various sources, and engage a range of academic disciplines, from politics to biology, not forgetting philosophy, social policy, law, sociology, geography, anthropology, criminology, psychology, psychiatry, public health, forensics and neurosciences in between. Hammersley notes that drug users admit to more crime than non-users; hence criminals admit to more drug use than non-criminals. Studies around the world all find that drug use and crime are correlated; it is argued that drugs-crime connections are largely a product of the illegality of drugs. Nonetheless, it does not necessarily mean that eliminating drugs will reduce crime, or have only beneficial effects on society, as drugs rarely turn law-abiding citizens into thieves. 'Drug use does not occur in the abstract, but always in some setting, and when people judge use they really tend to judge a combination of drug, set and setting, even if they talk only of the drug'.