What Are The Three Hypotheses Related To Drugs And Crimes

Drug abuse is one of the most discouraged behaviors in our country. In the United States of America, we, the people value several things, some of which are freedom, expanding and taking care of our families and our financial security. We, the people, take such things for granted. We also discourage some behavior, such as crime, laziness and use of illegal drugs.

Drugs and violence are universal. Although not all drugs cause violence some drugs like alcohol, methamphetamine, and crack cocaine do and can have horrible results. Some of the behavior that these drugs can cause are: domestic violence, sexual assault, homicides, and property crimes. Although horrible things do happen people still use them and crimes like these happen too much. This is a social issue because people see this as a norm. This shouldn't be a norm and people need to start realizing that.

The United States have imprisoned many people in the country than any other due to drug wars. In the year 2014 more than 1.5 million people were arrested for drugs. Drug offenses by itself caused these

There are too many people in prison in our country and any people in prison today are non-violent drug offenders. The American war on drugs has targeted people in poverty and minorities, who are more likely to be involved in drug use. This has created a pattern of crime and incarceration and “...[a] connection between increased prison rates and lower crime is tenuous and small.” (Wyler). The prison system in our country today focuses on punishment for the inmates rather than rehabilitation for life after their release.

Also, many scientific studies support the connection between drug use and crime. One study investigated state prisoners who had five or more convictions. It was found that four out of every five of them used drugs on a regular basis. With that being said legalizing drugs would definitely increase crime and social problems.

Hypothesis I: Drug Use Can Cause Crime Different studies have shown that the relationship between criminal behavior and drug use. Most of the evidence does reveal that drug users are more prone to engage in illegal conduct. For example, pharmacological violence involves the effect of a drug having a direct physiological influence on a perpetrator engaging or committing an act of violence. The consequence is that a particular substance triggered violent conduct as a result of the material is accessible in their system. Furthermore, this evidence has also shown that psychoactive stimulants like methamphetamine, cocaine, or the hallucinogen PCP can trigger an on-edge state of mind as well as social paranoia that can potentially result in violent behavior for individuals using drugs (Levinthal, 2012).

What we know undeniably, is that there is a high association between drugs use and criminal activity, which appears in the documentary Pill Nation. In my opinion, the relationship between Gottfredson & Hirschi’s self-control and Strain theory accounts for the drug and alcohol criminological problem. An excellent example of this is former doctor Larry Friedes AKA " The Rouge Doctor before he was addicted to drugs, he was a heavy user of alcohol, drugs, and gambling. Then he became a full time junky."

Drugs can also affect someone’s likelihood to commit crime because of the effects it has on the person while they are under the influence. Drug use can affect an individual’s speed, memory, alertness and reactions. Crimes related to drugs or alcohol may be the result of the effects that the substances have on their thought processes and behaviour which causes them to commit criminal activity.

The three types of drug-related crimes explain the relationship between drugs and crime and it helps understand why so many individuals end up in jail for drug related charges.

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

The drug crimes are recognized by the United States legal system in different scenarios and perspective. Each perspective carries legal charges upon conviction. The drug crimes vary from directly being in possession of the drugs that have been legally criminalized with the intention to sell or being in the possession of the drugs with the intention for personal use. The two intentions for the use of the drug are treated separately and carries a different legal term upon conviction. The possession of the drug as the tool for the trade is treated as a serious offense as compared to that for personal

For as long as we have been a nation there have been criminal elements. Criminal elements are nothing new and often time’s criminal behavior is part and parcel with substance abuse. When people think of substance abuse the images that come to mind are often the work of fiction and have little to no resemblance to what the individual users adheres to. Meriam Webster’s defines substance abuse as a noun, “Overindulgence in our dependence on an addictive substance, esp. alcohol or drugs “(Merriam). Being a criminology major, I often ask myself why? Why do people gravitate towards substances and why individuals chose to follow the addictive path? Once we determine the why we can do what we criminologist do best, formulate a theory. I think understanding the societal factors of substance abuse and the correlation you can make between certain recurring themes will help better determine what pressures are in place that could influence ones’ decision making either way. The thing with criminology theory and especially socio-construct theory is that almost all areas have been covered, not trying to re-invent the wheel, but taking a different approach will still help better understand the issues at hand. The research will try to look at, what has been done and what those results show as well as what needs to be done moving forward.

There has always been a close association between drugs and crime. Drugs have been seen as a way out of suffering in one’s life and so as long as there is suffering there will always be a market for drugs. The struggle to keep one’s self sane when away from a substance they need can cause them to do crazy and even violent things to others. Things like murdering someone because they did not have proper control of themselves is not something unheard of by any means. These people can been seen as both victims and criminals, as they were not in a sound state of mind when doing these actions, however them doing the actions does not mean they should get off scot-free. The users are only one side of the coin, the other is the drug dealers. The dealers do not have to be selling purely illegal drugs, they may be selling prescription drugs too, but in the pursuit of their own survival in a struggling life, they turn to selling substances to others. By doing so they can even amass a fortune, but this is still a crime, and what people will do to try to get all this potential money can span from robbing to murder. The articles I read from different media support the fact there is indeed a tie with crime and drugs, being that an increase of drugs on the street leads to more crime.

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

I have friends who were born in corrupt neighborhoods to parents who were on drugs and they went down the same trail as them. Their environment played a large part in how they chose to live their lives. Some people have a biological predisposition for drugs, and the