The Relationship between Drugs and Crime In this dissertation, I would like to discuss how crime and drug use is complex. There are numerous factors that lead people to misuse drugs. These are a variety of social, psychological and economic factors. Gender and age are proven factors statistically but not enough research has been carried out to be able to consider an accurate assessment of a true account of how crime and drugs go hand in hand with each other. In my dissertation. We will be looking into how drug users become physical and phycological dependence on drugs. We will look at the burden that can be placed on an impressionable people by having dysfunctional families as well as having peer pressure from friends. The factors that we are going to look at could be cause by a person's family genes or it could be down to a personality trait that plays a massive role in a person misusing drugs as well as being involved in criminal behavior. It is also clear that there is a connection between drug taking and crime but the link is not as clear to get an arcuate reading from this. It could be considered that they are factors that incline that people to have different behaviors and drug misuse. Or is it that one could lead to another. We will consider at some length to what is being done to help police drug crime and conclude that it is being challenged every day by the police and other organizations because of the ever-increasing problem in society, such that
The use and misuse of illicit drugs in today’s society can be blamed on both individual, and societal factors. With the use of societal factors researchers can show the effect for a larger population, and provide better information of the population. Blaming the individual for developing the addiction will not fix issues that lie in society that worked against the individual, the underlying issues of poverty and addiction, many scholarly articles mention bad neighborhoods, low income, and loose family ties with future drug use. I will be using evidence from articles involving both teen and adult drug use and addiction, as the effect on society is noticed in both age brackets. “Substance use is considered a problem by individual addicts who seek treatment, by institutions within society (such as the police or the medical system) that deal with substance use and its consequences on a day-to-day basis, and by national organizations such as governments or supranational organizations, such as the International Narcotics Control Board (a United Nations agency located in Vienna). (Adrian) I will be using scholarly articles to explain the sociological reasoning behind drug use, with theories involving low-income neighborhoods, leading to lessening of family involvement which can lead to drug use. “Drug abuse affects a community 's living conditions and economy, its youth, and the environment for crime.” (Watts)
The Goldstein (1985) tripartite model differentiates the drug-crime relationship in three types. According to Levinthal (2012), the three major types of drug related violence including (1) pharmacological violence, (2) economic compulsive violence, and (3) systemic violence. Studies confirm, drug related violence are linked; however, factors deviate with each individual (Levinthal, 2012).
Drug abuse and substance use have been categorized as a major reason for increased crime and rebellion amongst citizenly. Women, children and unemployed middle aged individuals experience increased crime rate as they are considered less contributors to general economic decisions. These include the inaccessibility of social amenities, lack of security and likely a surge in desperation to engage in misconducts that attract forceful interventions from existing
Studies indicate that drug abuse is currently on the rise. The results are not limited to an increase in the number of deaths but also in the amount that individuals control. Notably, not only is it in the cities, it continually spreads to neighboring suburbs. Consequently, the number of death toll has more than doubled within a short period. Clearly, the drug is but to be labeled as a threat to the existence of the human race. Recent research indicates that the drug is becoming more prevalent among the whites especially women. Concretely, the increase is a result of the low prices it fetches
There needs to be a change in the criminal justice system. Convicted felons who are charged with any drug felony should not be put into jail or prison because it doesn’t help solve the problem. Rudy Haapanen states, “It is now generally agreed that the criminal justice system fails to rehabilitate offenders, to make them less likely to commit criminal acts as a result of treatment or training; that the system fails to deter potential offenders, to make then less likely to commit criminal acts out of fear of penal sanctions”. In this paper I will discuss drug use in the population, drug dealers, drugs and regulations. I will discuss drug use in the population so that you will see
CRIMINOLOGYDoes drug use cause crime, does crime cause drug use or is the relationship entirely co-incidental?INTRODUCTIONIn this paper I will look at the amount and type of crime caused by drugs, the relationship between drugs and crime and the relationship between alcohol and crime.
Illicit drug consumption is closely associated with criminal behaviour. Crimes linked with illicit drug consumption include shoplifting, property crime, drug dealing, violence and aggression and driving will be intoxicated. The associated burdens on communities take account of medical, public health, and criminal-justice costs, as well as public disorder and property crime.
Crime occurs when someone the formal written law by an overt act, omission or neglect that can result in punishment (Macionis, et, al., 2013, p.161). The impact of deviance can last for a long time on an individual, and the coping up ways of each individual that has been affected by crime differs from one another. Macionis, et, al., (2013) states that, “the problem of illegal drugs in countries such as Canada is a demand issue. The demand for cocaine and other drugs is increasing in alarming rate; as a result people look for illegal ways to get drugs. Which increase in crime rate on how people smuggle these drug to where it’s illegal, and high rates of addiction in many young people who are willing to risk arrest or even death for a chance
A common belief is that drugs cause crime; and in the criminal justice system there are terms used for crime that is related to or due to the use of drugs. First there are “drug defined offences”, in which is the possession, use, sale, or manufacturing of illegal drugs. Second, is “drug related offences”, which occur when drugs are either the motive or the incentive. This occurs when a person is either under the influence of a drug and commits a crime; commits a crime in order to get money for drugs; or commits a crime due to the distribution of drugs. The final term is “drug-using lifestyle” in which individuals do not have a legitimate economic income and are involved in the illegal manufacturing and distribution of drugs (Pacitti, Balleine, & Killcross, 2013).
Drugs play a tremendous role in the world of crime. In 2004, the United States Department of Justice stated 64% of Federal prisoners and 70% of State prisoners regularly used drugs. 25% of current inmates felt intoxicated on drugs when they committed whatever crime got them in jail. Narcotics not only cause addiction problems, but they also motivate crime. Contrabands lead to crime
Illegal drugs will always be the number one cause of criminal behavior. Within today’s society, drugs have taken a negative impact on individuals who buys and sell drugs. The negative consequences of drug abuse affect not only individuals who abuse drugs but also their families and friends, various businesses, and government resources. Although many of these effects cannot be quantified, ONDCP recently reported that in 2002, the economic cost of drug abuse to the United States was $180.9 billion. (National Drug Threat Assessment) Drugs are one of the major criminal issues that society faced for
In her article “The Drugs Relationship: Exploring Dynamic and Static Models,” Lesley Williams Reid examines the relationship between drugs and crime by looking at offenders’ environment. For example she surveyed 835 men in four different cities, which lead her to make her own theories which was that criminals had committed their first crime at an early age and drug users also started at an early age (Reid, 2001). The weakness in Reid article is that she based her research on male inmates in maximum security. This is a weakness because she is only focusing on one gender and one small population.
1.) Many drugs have been used for medical purposes at one time or another. Pick two drugs that have been utilized in this capacity and explain the medical rationale behind their use. Conclude your answer with a description of why each drug was later banned from medical usage.
A lot of people link drug abuse with crime, at times even with violent crime. This association comes from psychopharmacological association that imply that people may engage in criminal acts after taking some kind of substance known to undermine their judgment as well as self-control result in paranoid thoughts and distortion of inhibitions (Sewell, Poling and Sofuoglu, 189). Though all substances that affect the central nervous system might result in this kind of relationships, scientific information indicates that some type of drugs have a more strong effect than others. Such drugs are alcohol, cocaine, phencyclidine and amphetamines (McCauley, Ruggiero, Resnick and Kilpatrick, 136). Inversely, cannabis and heroin are less associated with desire to commit
In a study that was done back in 1970 by Sutherland and Cressey, they pointed out that in the U.S. alone, “felons are overrepresented in the addict population, [and] crime rates are increased considerably by drug addiction” (1970, p. 164). Despite having proposed several hypotheses attempting to explain the correlation between drug abuse and crime, they could not reach a conclusion. A decade later, the knowledge about the drug/crime relationship had steadily increased due to numerous studies of the incarcerated or addicted population. However, the information didn’t reveal any viewpoints that made sense aside from heroin. This view was