The Relationship between Drug Use and Crime among Police Detainees: Does Gender Matter?

Abstract

Research has shown a relationship between substance use and offending, but the nature of this relationship remains unclear, especially for women. To explore this, 867 female police detainees in New South Wales were interviewed to examine the temporal order of substance use and offending, correlates of substance use and offending, and relationships between social background, substance use, and offending. Offenses relating to substance use, such as possession, were excluded. Canonical correlations revealed a significant association between substance use and offending. Results of t-tests showed that substance use significantly preceded criminal offending. Younger, less-educated women self-reported more heroin and cannabis dependency. Women who self-reported drug dependency had higher levels of offending than those who did not. These results are markedly different from patterns observed in most male offenders. We review the implications of these findings for crime prevention, rehabilitation and substance abuse treatment.

Keywords:

• Substance abuse
• crime
• female
• police detainee

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by a publication grant to the second author from Charles Sturt University Faculty of Arts.

We would like to acknowledge all the women who participated in this study, with a special thank you to Lubica Forsythe and staff at the Australian Institute of Criminology. We are grateful to Mira Taitz and Melissa Martin for their research assistance in preparing this manuscript.