Age-related differences in patterns of criminal activity among a large sample of polydrug injectors in Australia

Abstract

Background: The relationship between age and criminal activity among drug-using populations is poorly understood.

Methods: Data from 10 years of repeat cross-sectional surveys of sentinel samples of regular people who inject drugs (PWID) across Australia (n = 5844) were used to explore the relationship between age and past-month drug dealing, property crime and violent crime, and past-year arrest. Descriptive statistics were used to explore the prevalence and frequency of each outcome. The relationship between age and each outcome was measured using multivariable Poisson regression with robust error variance.

Results: After adjusting for confounding factors, each 5-year increase in age was associated with significant reductions in drug dealing (adjusted incidence rate ratio [AIRR]: 0.90, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.87–0.94), property crime (AIRR: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.82–0.89) and violent crime (AIRR: 0.77, 95% CI: 0.70–0.85). Older participants were also significantly less likely to report being arrested in the past 12 months (AIRR: 0.91, 95% CI: 0.88–0.93).

Conclusions: Younger PWID are more heavily involved in criminal activity compared with their older counterparts. This study highlights the need for early intervention programmes to prevent offending behaviour becoming entrenched, as well as continued efforts to redirect young PWID away from the criminal justice system and into treatment and education programmes.

• Age
• Australia
• crime
• injecting drug use
• violence

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution to this work of the Victorian Operational Infrastructure Support Program.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interests. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

This work was supported by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. DH is supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award and through the NHMRC-funded Centre for Research Excellence into Injecting Drug Use, based at the Burnet Institute. PD is supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT100100321). LD and RA are supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (Principal Research Fellowship 1041742 to LD; Career Development Fellowship (Level 2) 1012485 to RA). PH is supported by a Curtin University Research Fellowship (130050). The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales and the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University are supported by funding from the Australian Government under the Substance Misuse Prevention and Service Improvements Grants Fund.

Supplementary material available online Supplementary Table S1