Drug Addiction and Criminality: A Model for Predicting the Incidence of Crime among a Treatment Population

Abstract

Although is has been posited that there is a causal relationship between drug abuse and crime, the determinative parameters of this phenomenon have not been adequately explored. Previous studies have failed to yield consistent results explaining the effects of drug abuse and subsequent treatment upon criminal behavior in terms of the direction and magnitude of the assumed relationship. Based on widely accepted methods for predicting the incidence of drug abuse among a treatment population (Hunt, 1976; Nakkash, 1977), the present study utilized this incidence technique to: (1) predict the expected incidence of crime among a drug abusing treatment population; (2) determine the impact of treatment upon the identified criminal activities; and (3) develop a probability model for determining the expected level of both drug abuse and crime subsequent to the treatment experience. The methodology modified the Incidence Model to include the variables of year of first criminal involvement, and number of crime-free and drug-free days before, during, and after treatment. The data used for this study was taken from two related sources: (1) the 1977 Client Oriented Data Acquisition Process (CODAP); and (2) the results from an Incidence, Prevalence and Cost-benefit Study conducted by Richard Katon Associates.