The Correlation Between Drugs And Crime

The Goldstein tripartite was created to show three types of drug related violence. “Goldstein…explained that, substance abuse leads to crime, via his popular tripartite conceptual framework… psychopharmacological model, economic compulsive model, and systemic violence model” (Sarker, S.K., & Faller, E.M., 2016). They are systemic violence, pharamacological violence, and economically compulsive violence. Systemic violence is when violence occurs between the seller and the buyer. “…violent acts that …exist within a network of illicit drug trafficking and distribution” (Levinthal, C.F., 2012), p.93. This behavior is normal in the drug world. Some systemic violence are disputes between dealers, dealers being robbed, removal of snitches, and collecting

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).

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

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

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.

Since some of our states have made marijuana legal, the crime cycle in those states is becoming a topic of interest all across America. For what once was a crime, the act of making it legal cuts the amount of crime automatically. This study analyzes the effect of making drugs legal has on the crime cycle. It questions how legalizing marijuana has affected crime rates, either positively or negatively. The goal is to increase the amount of knowledge regarding the legalization and how it relates to crime cycles in order to ultimately reduce the prison populations.

1. Drug usage/addiction becomes a compulsive behavior, where the drug becomes the most important aspect in the persons life. As the drug use becomes more of a serious illicit use, the more likely crimes are committed to pay for the drugs. Drug usage in turn impacts the cost for programs required for offenders to get off the drugs and be clean and sober. Walsh, A. (2010). Correctional Assessment, Casework & Counseling. Baltimore, MD: American Correctional Assn

The tripartite conceptual model outlines three crimes, systemic crimes, psychopharmacological crimes, and economic-compulsive crimes. An example of a systemic crime is a violent act, such as a homicide or assault (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2007). Another example is the psychopharmacological crime. This is when acute or chronic use of psychoactive substances commit a crime. These are usually unreported such as a sexual assault or robbery while the victim in incapacity due to a psychoactive substance (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2007). The third is economic-compulsive crimes which are crimes carried out because they do not have the money for drugs. The crimes can be consensual, such as prostitution, or acquisitive crimes

There has been speculation that the decriminalization of all drugs in Portugal has caused a rapid increase in the number of crimes and homicides in Portugal. Between 2001- 2006, the number of homicides increased by 40% from 105 to 148 per year (Murkin, 1). This may be attributed to the fact that now that drugs are legal, drug availability is more prevalent making it much harder for dealers to compete for customers and eventually resulting in turf battles ending in homicides. This could also be a product of directly drug related murders since getting high, causing the person be have less judgment over his or her self, may lead to reckless actions. However, there has been no concrete evidence supporting that the decriminalization of drugs or drug use itself has had any impact on this rise in homicide rate. This is merely a coincidence statistically but may have deeper prevalence if examined much closer. Crime in general since 2001 in Portugal has increased as well, however, these are mostly associated with petty thefts and robberies (Murkin, 1). This, as well, seems associated with the decriminalization of drugs, but researchers have deduced that this increase in document crimes is due to the fact that police officers can now focus their efforts on dealing with these criminals and other offenders of the law rather then having to deal with drug related crimes everyday. This enables more dangerous criminals to be focused on and decreases the number of drug related offenders in

Atrociously, it appears that drugs and crime seem to go hand in hand. Moreover, research has been broken down into three hypothesizes to analyze the relationship between drugs and crime. Those hypothesizes are, drug use causes crime, crime causes drug use, and finally, both drug use and crime share common causes. Furthermore, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program, known as ADAM II, is utilized by the Department of Justice to show statistics of individuals who have been apprehended for serious crimes and tested through urinalysis for a number of illicit drugs. The statistics indicate that the use of drugs among the arrestee population is higher than in the general population and confirm the suspicions about the correlation between drug use and criminal behavior. However, it does not indicate the causative relationship, therefore hypothesizes were created to untangle the confusion of the research into the possible causal relationship between drugs and crime (Levinthal, 2012).

Like all successful propaganda, "drug-related" has become so hackneyed that no one bothers to examine its fundamental truthfulness. And, also like successful propaganda, the phrase is rarely a complete falsehood but at the same time is rarely completely truthful. Drugs are often given central importance as the key motivating factor for crime, artfully shifting attention away from what is really central.

Over the years, I think there has been misconception that drug use is the common cause for crime, as we are lead to believe that drug are bad and that they turned people into crazy criminals. While it might be true to some extents, I think the relationship between drug use and crime is rather complex and dynamic. As a community, we tend to blame drugs for every problem in our society, but the reality is that there are other important factors that we need to take into account, including unemployment, socio economic inequality and poor mental health before we could say that drug use really caused crime. As pointed out in The Sociology of American Drug Use, research provides ‘’no conclusive evidence about any single relationship between drug use

From the Goldstein article it is hard to deny that there is not some link to drug use and violence. According the article it is, "estimated that 10% of the homicides and assaults nationwide are the result of drug use". It also claims that, "research indicates relatively high frequencies of alcohol consumption in rape". Clearly there is some connection between drugs use and acting violently or being a victim of violence. What is that connection though?

The Economic Deprivation Theory is linked between different conditions and crime to classify why lower-class people leading to illegal drugs through poverty-related social conditions. This theory is where people value things and join social movements with the hope of restoring their grievances. This is the point why people use illegal drugs in the first place. Authors discuss some reasons why poor individuals turn to specific drugs based on their poverty conditions. There is some conflict that children who are raised in poverty conditions are less likely to enjoy their childhood. The relationship with poor family and effects of the economic deprivation theory is not explained very well. Researchers have tried to link economic and child development

It has been over forty years since Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” and implemented more policies to reduce America’s drug problem. After Nixon decided to tackle on this drug problem, there was a huge increase in arrests throughout the 1980s. In the mid-1990s, there was a decline in violent crime arrests but a steady increase in the drug arrests (LaFree,1999). This decline in violent crime rates have suggested that there might be something more at large that can explain why violent crimes have decreased while other crimes have increased.