When two measures of drug dependency do not accord: prevalence, correlates, and implications for treatment in the criminal justice context

ABSTRACT

Reducing the volume of drug-related crime has long been a challenge for criminal justice system practitioners and policymakers worldwide. In Australia, this challenge has been tackled using a continuum of early intervention, diversion, and intensive treatment, with drug courts operating as a final alternative to imprisonment for the most serious and frequent drug-dependent offenders. In this study, we explore self-reported dependency and its concordance with the outcomes of a clinical screening tool designed to indicate DSM-V drug dependence in criminal justice populations. We find that not all offenders who self-report their dependency are clinically assessed as dependent. Similarly, not all those who are clinically assessed as dependent identify as such. We also show that these results vary by the frequency, type and longevity of drug use and argue that this discordance has clear implications for the fidelity and success of the drug treatments that are a mandated part of different criminal justice sanctions.

KEYWORDS:

• Drug use
• self-report
• drug court; drug dependency; identity; concordance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jason L. Payne

Dr. Jason L. Payne is Deputy Associate Dean of Education and Associate Professor of Criminology with the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He was formerly a research manager with the Australian Institute of Criminology and his research interests include quantitative criminology, developmental and Life-Course criminology, drug markets and drug-related crime.

Cameron T. Langfield

Cameron T. Langfield is a Research Assistant and Academic Tutor in the Centre for Social Research and Methods at the Australian National University. His research interests include drug-crime connections, drug markets, drug dependency and drug use, as well as expansions of criminological theory.