The Relationship Between Drug Abuse And Criminal Behaviour: A Case Study Of Two Government Drug Rehabilitation Centres In Penang, Malaysia
| dc.contributor.author | Karofi, Usman Ahmad | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2016-10-24T03:20:34Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2016-10-24T03:20:34Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2005-07 | |
| dc.description.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. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/2797 | |
| dc.subject | Social Sciences | en_US |
| dc.subject | Drug Abuse | en_US |
| dc.title | The Relationship Between Drug Abuse And Criminal Behaviour: A Case Study Of Two Government Drug Rehabilitation Centres In Penang, Malaysia | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
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