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Article Excerpt
Developments in United Kingdom drug policy since 1998 have been heavily influenced by concerns about drug-related crime (Duke, 2006; Stevens, 2007). For example, Paul Hayes, the Director of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse has been quoted as saying "[a]s drug misuse is now perceived largely as a crime problem rather than a public health or individual health and welfare issue, the role of treatment has to be justified by the contribution it can make to crime reduction" (Hayes, quoted by Nolan, 2002, p. 97). The problem of drug-related crime has taken statistical form in measures that attempt to capture the cost of drug-related crime and, importantly, the share of all drug-related harm that is represented by crime. It has been estimated (although with some caution) that drug-related crime imposed economic and social costs of 13.9 billion [pounds sterling] in 2003/2004 (approximately $23.6 billion at contemporary exchange rates) in England and Wales (Gordon, Tinsley, Godfrey, & Parrott, 2006). Earlier findings on these costs (Godfrey, Eaton, McDougall, & Culyer, 2002) informed the development of the Drug Harm Index (DHI, MacDonald, Collingwood, & Gordon, 2006; MacDonald, Tinsley, Collingwood, Jamieson, & Pudney, 2005).
The DHI is used by the British government, through the Public Service Agreement on illegal drugs, to measure the effectiveness of the official drug strategy. Drug-related crime is heavily weighted in the DHI. For 2004, over 70% of the value of the index was contributed by indicators of crime, with over 30% coming from domestic and commercial burglary (MacDonald, Collingwood, & Gordon, 2006). This means that one of the main means by which the government measures the impact of its drug policy is heavily influenced by changes in crime.
This article explores how criminal harm has been linked to drug use and presents evidence that suggests that the proportion of crime that can be causally attributed to drug use has been exaggerated in political debate, in Home Office reports and in indicators such as the DHI. This overestimation is important in influencing both the focus of UK drug policy and the prospects for reducing the criminalization of drug users.
The article begins by critically analyzing the methods that have been used to calculate the cost of drug-related crime and its weighting in the measurement of changes in drug-related harm. It explores the bases of these calculations in NTORS (National Treatment Outcome Research Study) and NewADAM (New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring). It shows how the methods of these studies lead to the overestimation of both the number of offenses by problematic drug users and their causal attribution to drug use. They extrapolate data from captive populations of drug users, either in treatment or police custody, while ignoring that neither treatment patients nor police arrestees provide representative samples of drug users or offenders. In order to illustrate this problem, the article develops the hypothesis that drug users are overrepresented in populations of arrestees by reference to the literature on police discrimination, and then tests this hypothesis using data from the Offending, Crime and Justice Survey. The implications of the overestimation of drug related crime are finally discussed.
The estimation of drug-related crime
Widely varying estimates of the scale of drug-related crime have been made. For example, in British parliamentary debates on drug policy, such estimates have ranged from 20% to 70% of crime being drug-related (Stevens, 2006).
Drugs, crime and causality
Given the level of uncertainty, and the political importance of the issue, it is not surprising that the Home Office has attempted to produce estimates of the scale of drug-related crime. The two main attempts have been the estimates done by a team at the University of York (Godfrey, Eaton, McDougall et al., 2002; Gordon, Tinsley, Godfrey et al., 2006) and the Home Office's DHI (MacDonald, Collingwood, & Gordon, 2006: MacDonald, Tinsley, Collingwood et al., 2005). Although both teams acknowledge some of the difficulties in making these estimates, both their attempts rest on a fundamental assumption; that it is the drug use of these offenders that cause their crimes and so is the factor to which the cost and weighing of these crimes can be attributed. Godfrey and colleagues (2002) base their assumptions on the numbers of crimes reported by members of the NTORS sample (Gossop, Macesden, Stewart et al. 1998). The costs of these crimes are estimated and all of them are described as a cost of drug use. This assumes that none of these crimes would have occurred without these offenders' use of drugs and that their costs can therefore be causally attributed to drug use. Although it takes a different approach to the measurement of the proportion of crime that is drug-related (see below), the DHI also defines "drug-related crime as that committed by serious drug users" (i.e. those who have used heroin, cocaine, or crack in the month previous to the offense, MacDonald et al., 2005, p. 7). It again assumes that all these drug users" crimes are directly caused by their drug use.
This assumption is unfounded. Da Agra (2002, p. 30) summarizes the available research and argues that "[t]here is no causal relationship between drugs and crime. There is a complex system of connections ... [which is] irreducible both to drug addiction and to delinquent lifestyle." While it is true that many dependent drug users report that they have committed offenses to get money to buy drugs, there are several other potential links between offending and drug use which play a part in this complex connection. These were listed by Russell (1994) in a report which led to the development of English Drug Treatment and Testing Orders. They include:
* Drug driven. The economic-compulsive (Goldstein, 1985) model of drug users committing crimes in order to fund their drug habit.
* Disinhibition/aggression. The psycho-pharmacological (Goldstein, 1985) model, in which the effects of drug use increase aggression and reduce the inhibitions that prevent offending.
* Market related offending. The systemic (Goldstein, 1985) model of crime being generated through the operation of the illegal trade in drugs.
* Drug law crimes. E.g. possession, production, dealing and trafficking of illicit drugs.
* Co-existence. Crime and drug use may be done by the same people without any direct causal link.
* Crime pre-exists. For most offenders their crimes began at an earlier age than their drug use.
* Crime-enabled drug use. Crime provides funds for non-dependent drug use that would not otherwise have occurred.
* Underlying social problems. Crime and drugs are linked through the, often deprived, social context in which both take place.
* Deviance disavowal. Retrospective rationalization by offenders who wish to minimize responsibility for their crimes.
The idea that the crimes of recent users of heroin and cocaine are caused by their drug use reflects a limited range of the possible explanations of the link between their drug use and their offending. Some studies plausibly suggest that offending tends to accelerate during periods of frequent and dependent drug use (e.g. Anglin & Speckart, 1988; Parent & Brochu, 2002). However, other studies have suggested that some users of heroin and cocaine can control their use and avoid other offenses (Cohen & Sas, 1994; Shewan & Dalgarno, 2006; Warburton, Turnbull, & Hough, 2005; Zinberg, 1984). The assumption on drug-related crime which is shared by both the University of York and DHI approaches exclusively relies on a direct causal link from drug use to crime. It therefore follows the tendency in contemporary discourse on drug-related crime, noted by Seddon (2006), to divorce both crime and drug use from...
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