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Substance use, psychological distress and crime

Abstract

Criminological studies that track people's careers in drug use and offending demonstrate that most offenders become involved in minor crime before experimenting with and using illegal drugs. This editorial argues, thus, that treating substance misuse among offenders, though an essential public health measure, might not necessarily result in significant reductions in the number of offenders. This is because crime and drug use may be caused more by factors external to the individual, that are not easily amenable to treatment. The Australian Institute of Criminology's Drug Use Monitoring in Australia project has shown that police detainees' drug use patterns vary across the country, with the nature of the local drug market, and that the links between drugs and offending types (violent and property offending) appear more variable than is often thought. Recent evaluations of the southeast Queensland and New South Wales drug courts have shown that, even with a 12 month structured, supervised program, some people continue to be criminally active and use illegal drugs. While the criminal justice systems in Australia have developed a range of policy innovations, including early police diversion programs, court based diversion initiatives and drug courts, opportunities for diversion of offenders into treatment could be strengthened in other areas. These include providing postrelease support and drug treatment programs for prisoners leaving custody, and improving diversion to treatment in the gap between police diversion and the drug court: targeting people who are arrested and processed but whose offence is not sufficiently serious to meet the criteria for a formal drug court program. For this, treatment options must exist - at present, there is a range of effective treatments for heroin, but options for other illegal drugs are extremely limited.

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