AN EVIDENCE-BASED ANALYSIS OF THE SUBSTANCE USE-CRIME RELATIONSHIP

When the evidence is examined, a very different picture develops from the one that views drug use as causal to crime. One thing that becomes obvious in a review of the relevant literature is that the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), which tends to have a good reputation worldwide for basing its treatment programs on empirical research, has not directly questioned the assumption of a causal link between substance use and crime. No research on this topic was found from any sources associated with official corrections policy in Canada. In fact, the main research referred to by CSC and Solicitor General officials regarding this issue is the report entitled: “Proportions of Crimes Associated with Alcohol and Other Drugs in Canada” (Pernanen et al. 2002). This work carries out a statistical analysis of the self-reported and police reported correlations between drug and alcohol use and crime. It does not, however, systematically explore the nature of the relationship between substance abuse and crime.

The research that does explore this association in depth is still in its beginning stages, but some patterns are starting to emerge. Advanced research into the drugs/crime nexus is showing that, typically, criminal or delinquent behavior appears in an individual before substance use, but the use of certain drugs may intensify criminal activity of an individual. Also, research shows that different substances are associated with different types of crime. Most significantly, many experts hypothesize that both substance abuse and crime may stem from common etiologies and this may explain the strong correlation between the two phenomena. Finally, evidence indicates that the black market for illicit substances has the strongest link to violence, and that drug traffickers tend to have the lowest rates of substance dependencies.

General Patterns

Beginning in the 1980s and continuing to present day, a number of studies have attempted to examine the relationship between drugs, alcohol and crime. Chaiken and Chaiken (1990), in a paper focusing on the quantitative research exploring the connection of drugs to predatory crime, conclude that despite the prevailing view that drug abuse leads to acts of crime as a means to raise funds to buy more drugs, other patterns of behavior were more prevalent. Predatory crime here is defined as instrumental offense committed for material gain. They also brought forward the idea that offenders who are intoxicated when committing a crime may be more likely to get caught, and therefore are over-represented in the populations being studied. Most research on the drugs/crime nexus has been conducted with inmates and arrestees. Therefore, Chaiken and Chaiken suggest we use caution not to over generalize when using data from arrestees or inmates because we may be not hearing from another type of offender: someone who does not use drugs or alcohol while committing a crime, who does not get caught when committing crime and who does not commit crime to help obtain drugs or alcohol.

McBride and McCoy (1993) conducted a well-designed study of the drug/crime relationship in the United States. They found that: “a wide body of research suggests that drug use and crime have a complex, recursive nature to their relationship, and that drug use, in spite of a long history of public perceptions, cannot be viewed as a direct and simple cause of crime” (p. 257). In a 1995 study of juveniles in re-education centers in Quebec, Serge Brochu, a Canadian leader in this field, stated that “Young Offenders do not attribute their delinquency to drug use” (Brochu et al. 1995:103). And in a thorough study with adult federal and provincial inmates and arrestees from several Canadian cities, Brochu and his colleagues stated that: “It should be noted that a very small share of crime can be said to be exclusively determined by the use or abuse of drugs or alcohol” (Pernanen, et al. 2002:115).

In their study with 140 women prostitutes, Maxwell and Maxwell (2000) found “that frequent use of crack, heroin, or marijuana was neither positively nor negatively related to the likelihood of ever prostituting, but frequent involvement in property crimes significantly increased the likelihood of prostitution” (p. 800). They surmise that rather being caused by becoming enslaved to a drug addiction, a popular belief about the typical lifestyle trajectory of a prostitute, “…prostitution seems to be an alternative route for women who engage in other crimes for economic gain, specifically property crimes” (p. 800). They also point out that women who had engaged in drug trafficking were the least likely to engage in prostitution for income.