The Relationship Between Drug Abuse And Criminal Behaviour: A Case Study Of Two Government Drug Rehabilitation Centres In Penang, Malaysia
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Date
2005-07
Authors
Karofi, Usman Ahmad
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Abstract
A growing number of literature and empirical research have documented that a
relationship exists between drug abuse and criminal offences. Through studying
a selected sample of three hundred institutionalised drug addicts (inmates] with
and without criminal history from two government drug rehabilitation centres in
Penang, Malaysia, this research affirmed that there is a relationship between
drug abuse and involvement in criminal offences. The major findings of the
research were: (1) heroin and cannabis (ganja) were the major drugs abused by
the respondents; (2) drug abuse is linked with property offences; (3) the majority
of the research respondents agreed that they get involved in criminal activities
in order to support their drug use habit; (4) they acknowledged being involved in
property crime; (5) the multivariate analysis (binary logistic model) results show
a significant positive correlation between criminal behaviour and urbanization,
peer group, environment and no education/primary education; (6) those who
attributed poverty as one of the reasons for their criminal behaviour were found
to be less involved in criminal activities; (7) finally, the findings suggest that the
reasons why the respondents are involved in criminal activities in order to
support their drug use habit are: peer group pressure, residing in urban
settlement, influence of their living environment and no formal education or
attainment of only primary kind of education.
A significant breakthrough of this research's findings is that unlike most
sociological empirical studies, the current one discovered that poverty per se is
not a motivating factor to drug abusers who commit crime to support their drug
abuse habits. This suggests that poverty per se may not. be an important
predictor of criminal behaviour as far as the sam pie of this study is concerned.
Unexpectedly, therefore, according to the findings, poverty is not a predisposing
reason by drug abusers to criminal activities. It is so surprising that studies that
link poverty to criminal activities may in effect be capturing other factors.
Poverty leads to criminal behaviour only because the environment for other
undesirable charaderistics including negative peer influence predispose drug
abusers to criminal activities as discovered in this study.
The theoretical implication of the study is that drug abuse alone is an
inadequate explanatory variable for why drug abusers become involved in
criminal activities. For a proper understanding of criminal activities committed by
drug abusers, focus must go beyond their addiction to drugs to include both
micro (peer group pressure) and macro (environment, urban living, lower level
of education or no education at all) factors in order to fully understand of crime,
the dependent variable of this research. Such an understanding could lead to
better policies aimed at helping the rehabilitation of addicts involved in crime.
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Keywords
Social Sciences , Drug Abuse