High incidence of drug use among arrested women
High incidence of drug use among arrested women
Geesche Jacobsen Crime Editor
May 5, 2009
FOR women, drug use often leads to crime, but for men it is crime that leads to drug use, a new study has found.
The research, by the Australian Institute of Criminology, found women were more likely to be dependent on illegal drugs than men when they were arrested the first time.
They were also likely to be more socially disadvantaged than their male counterparts.
Among men, violence and property offences each accounted for about 25 per cent of the main offences for which they were arrested.
About 40 per cent of women were detained for property offences, and only 18 per cent for violent crimes.
But women who were dependent on alcohol were more likely to commit a violent offence than a property crime - a trend similar to men who regularly consumed large amounts of alcohol.
"Alcohol is associated with violent offending in women as it is in men, although perhaps not to the same extent," the study said.
About 29 per cent of male prisoners and 35 per cent of females attributed their offences to being intoxicated with drugs or alcohol.
Overall, women detained by police were four times as likely to have used illicit drugs at least once than women in the general population.
About 70 per cent of women detained were using illicit drugs regularly, the report found, and they tended to use drugs more frequently than men.
Women often used injectable drugs such as amphetamines and methylamphetamines or heroin.
Men were more likely to have been using alcohol and cannabis than other illicit drugs when they were first arrested.
"For males it is more likely that crime leads to drug use or that the two occur in a similar period," the report said.
The report also found women arrested by police were more likely to live in public housing than male detainees, and more than half of them were not in the workforce, while 85 per cent derived their legitimate income from welfare benefits. They also had more mental health problems and often had a history of physical and sexual abuse.
The report suggested: "One way to reduce the number of women entering the criminal justice system is to reduce drug dependency through early intervention."
To reduce women's drug use and crime, treatment had to also take account of mental health problems and social and occupational disadvantage, it found.
