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29 Brit. J. Criminology 175 (1989)
Young Heroin Users and Crime - How Do the New Users Finance Their Habits

handle is hein.journals/bjcrim29 and id is 183 raw text is: BRIT.J. CRIMINOL. Vol. 29 No. 2 SPRING 1989 YOUNG HEROIN USERS AND CRIME How Do the 'New Users' Finance Their Habits? GRAHAM JARVIS (NACRO) and HOWARD PARKER (Manchester)* This paper examines the drugs-crime connection in relation to the 'new' heroin users of the 1980s. An analysis of the criminal records of a sample offorty-six London-based heroin users shows that their annual rate of convictions more than doubled following the onset of regular heroin use. During in- depth interviews, the subjects reportedfinancing their habits largely through 'acquisitive crime'. Week- by-week analysis of their self-reported crime and drug use over a six-month period also revealed a close relationship. The personal and social characteristics of the now greatly expanded population of 'new' heroin users clearly warrants a reconsideration of penal and treatment policies. Introduction Common-sense notions about drug takers have long supposed that so called 'addicts' commit crime in order to finance their habits. Recent empirical research has borne out the truth of this assertion-a somewhat unusual occurrence in the social sciences. Much of the recent research in the area of drugs and crime has been conducted in North America and points to a strong connection between opiate use and serious offending. Inciardi (1979) found that 239 active male heroin users committed no less than 80,664 offences during a twelve-month period. The findings of Ball et al. (1981) are no less dramatic. They interviewed 243 Baltimore opiate addicts arrested or identified between 1952 and 1971: the topics covered included the interviewee's life- time history of drug use and criminality during periods of drug abuse or abstinence. Two-thirds of their subjects had between 100 and 365 crime-days (24-hour periods during which one or more crimes were commited) per year for all their 'years at risk' (i.e. the years when an individual was not incarcerated). One of their main findings was that heroin users commit a 'staggering amount of crime', and that the impact of addiction on criminality was 'pervasive and long-lasting'; the researchers were also convinced that criminality not only coincided with their subjects' opiate use, but that the need to purchase drugs was actually the cause of some crime: 'it is opiate use itself which is the principal cause of high crime rates among addicts'. Another team of American reseachers, Johnson et al. (1983), carried out a longitudinal study involving repeat interviews over an eight-week period with 201 street opiate users in East Harlem. The interviews concerned previous day's income from crime and legitimate sources, drugs purchased, sold, or distributed, and any involvement with methadone or other forms of treatment. The researchers found that almost all their subjects derived most of their income from crime and committed crimes on between one and five days each week, leading the researchers to claim they * Graham Jarvis is Research Officer with NACRO. Howard Parker is Professor of Social Work, Manchester University. We should like to thank the Home Office Research and Planning Unit, who commissioned this research, for permission to publish the findings.

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