We used data from interviews with police detainees (n=2,249) to measure the extent to which their offending was related to illicit drugs or alcohol. We then used these findings to estimate the total number of principal offences attributable to different substances.
In 2019, 45 percent of all detainees attributed their offending to substance use. Offending was most commonly attributed to methamphetamine (27.6%) and alcohol use (16.5%). Alcohol attribution was more common for violent crimes, while methamphetamine featured prominently among both violent and property offences.
Applying these attributable fractions to recorded crime data for 2019, we estimated that substance use contributed to approximately 156,760 principal offences in Australia. This included 95,990 offences attributable to methamphetamine and 56,627 attributable to alcohol use.
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