Narcotic Addiction and Crime

Abstract

Arrest rates and self‐reported criminal behavior are examined as a function of frequency of narcatic use during the addiction careers first daily narcatic use to last daily use) of a sample of 690 admissions to the California Civil Addict Program. Thirty‐five percent of the addiction career non‐incarcerated time involved less‐than‐daily or no narcatic use. During these periods. arrest rates for property crimes and self‐reported criminal behavior were substantially lower than for periods of daily use. This approach to examining the relationship between crime and narcatic addiction avoids several of the methodological problems encountered in pre‐ and pastaddiction and pre‐ and pasttreatment studies.

Further Examination of the Association Between Heavy Marijuana Use and Crime Among Youths Entering a Juvenile Detention Center

“…Their results clearly indicated a direct relationship between the addicts' intensity of drug use and the magnitude of their criminal behavior: The average number of crime days per year at risk was four to six times higher when these individuals were addicted than when they were involved in little or no illicit drug use. Similar findings were obtained at UCLA by McGlothlin and associates (Gropper 1985;McGlothlin, Anglin & Wilson 1978) in their study of 753 Southern Californian White and Hispanic heroin addicts who had been admitted to methadone maintenance programs.…”

Methamphetamine use among treatment-seeking adolescents in Southern California: Participant characteristics and treatment response

“…Self-reports on problem behaviors, such as drug use is suspect for both under-and overreporting (McCord, 1990), particularly because of the illegality of the behavior, which can lead to distortions in study outcomes. For example, studies that have employed confidential self-report interview methods assessing for criminal illegal behavior (i.e., crimes actually committed) resulted in gross underestimates (McGlothin, Anglin, & Wilson, 1978). In addition, there is large room for general errors in recalling information about events that occurred years earlier with self-report data.…”

Distinguishing Between Effects of Criminality and Drug Use on Violent Offending

“…13 Chaiken and Chaiken (1984); Elliott and Huizinga (1984) ;Goldstein, et al (1991); Harrison and Gfroerer (1992); Dembo, et al (1994) 14 Studies of offending patterns by narcotic addicts during periods of varying levels of drug use include McGlothlin, et al (1978), Ball, et al (1981, Ball, et al (1983), Shaffer, et al (1984), Nurco, et al (1985), Nurco, et al (1986), Nurco, et al (1988), Speckart (1986, 1988), Speckart and Anglin (1986a). Relying on panel data from general population samples of juveniles, two studies examine temporal patterns in initiation of drug use and delinquency (Huizinga et al, 1989;van Kammen and Loeber, 1994).…”

“…20 Of the studies identified in note 14, McGlothlin, et al (1978), Nurco, et al (1986), Nurco, et al (1988), and Anglin and Speckart (1986,1988) explicitly examine the same sample during periods of heavy and light use (usually distinguished by daily and less than daily use of narcotic drugs). The changes in offending relate specifically to drug or property offenses.…”