Killias, Martin, et al, "Effects of Heroin Prescription on Police Contacts among Drug-Addicts." European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. 1998; 6: pp. 433-438.
Abstract
Switzerland's programme of opiate prescription to drug-addicts has been thoroughly evaluated in many ways. The results published so far on the final findings, covering the programme's first year of operation, have focused on self-reported delinquent acts and victimisation reported during interviews. This article addresses these two issues. How did police-recorded crime develop over time, taking the offence type into account? Have these trends been affected by changing police control over the addicts participating in the programme? In other words, has an eventual drop been produced by less strict crime reporting (or recording) practice for programme participants, rather than by lower crime rates among this group? The analysis reported here confirms the results based on self-reported delinquency and victimisation data. According to police files, the drop in serious property offences was indeed comparable. As it turned out, this drop was not due to the reduced probability of the police recording offences committed by participants after their admission to the heroin prescription programme.
Background
Switzerland's programme of opiate prescription to drug-addicts has been thoroughly evaluated in many ways (Uchtenhagen 1997). One of the aspects evaluated was the programme's impact on criminal involvement among drug-addicts. The methodology of this criminological evaluation has been published before, as well as preliminary results (Killias and Uchtenhagen 1996; Killias and Rabasa 1997). The results published so far on the final findings, covering the programme's first year of operation, have focused on self-reported delinquent acts and victimisation reported during interviews (Killias and Rabasa 1998a, 1998b). They showed, overall, a strong decline in criminal activities in general, and in property crimes and drug-related offences in particular. Table I summarises these findings. The drop in victimisation was less marked, but followed generally the same trend (Killias and Rabasa 1997).
TABLE I
Drop in prevalence and incidence rates of self-reported criminality, after one year of treatment in the programme, compared to the time before admission (reference period of six months, n=319). Unless otherwise indicated, all changes are significant at the 0.05 level at least.
|
Offence type
|
Prevalence rates
|
Incidence rates
|
| Serious property offencesa |
-94%
|
-98%
|
| Other property offencesb |
-55%
|
-88%
|
| Selling 'soft' drugs |
-50%
|
-70%
|
| Selling 'hard' drugs |
-82%
|
-91%
|
| Assultc |
NS
|
NS
|
aBurglary, mugging, robbery, pick-pocketing
bTheft, shoplifting, receiving or selling stolen property
cWith or without weapon
So far, the published data has included only summary indications on trends of crime recorded by the police. Overall, there was a drop of approximately 60%, less than according to the self-report measures. This leaves two questions:
1. How did police-recorded crime develop over time, taking the offence type into account?
2. Have these trends been affected by changing police control over the addicts participating in the programme? In other words, has an eventual drop been produced by less strict crime reporting (or recording) practice for programme participants, rather than by lower crime rates among this group?
This article tries to address these two issues. They may be particularly important since, not surprisingly, certain observers challenged the validity of measures of self-reported delinquency in the present context.
Police-Recorded Offences
The Sample
In order to assess the effect of heroin prescription on criminal involvement among programme participants, we considered all those subjects who were interviewed at least three times, that is at admission to the programme and then every six months. The reference period for all three measurement points was six months. This group comprised 319 persons. Those participating in the programme operating at Basle were excluded, since no local police data could be collected for this group. Thus, the sample considered here consists of 253 individuals, of whom 72% are males. The average age is 30.
Comparisons with police data for these individuals are only possible for the first two periods (six months before and six months after admission to the programme). Indeed, only a few had been in treatment for at least 12 months when police data was collected.
Trends in Recorded Crime
Table II gives the incidence rates of police contacts during the two periods under consideration, during the last six months before admission, and during the first six months under treatment. The overall drop in contacts recorded by the police was, according to the details given here, 76%. For offences which seem to be particularly relevant for the public's safety, burglary and robbery for example, the drop is quite consistent with the trends in self-report data (see Table 1). For drug trafficking, the incidence rates dropped by 61%; use of drugs other than heroin dropped by about the same proportion. Although illegal heroin use, as recorded by the police, dropped by 83%, the general drop in illegal drug use underlines the conclusions of the medical evaluation which found that, contrary to expectation, heroin prescription tended to reduce also use of other (that is not prescribed) drugs (Uchtenhagen 1997). The use of cocaine and other drugs may, to some extent at least, have been opportunistic rather than the expression of an intrinsic need, a second choice whenever heroin was unavailable, or not available at reasonable rates.
According to the data in Table II, the drop in police-recorded offences seems to be greater than what the overall results, published so far, would seem to suggest (Killias and Rabasa 1998a, 1998b). The reason for this is that the results published so far have been based on periods of 12 and 18 months, while in this article we are considering periods of 6 months.
TABLE II
Incidence rates of police contacts, by offence type, before admission and after six months of treatment (n=253).a
|
Offence type
|
Before
|
After
|
p*
|
| Violent and sex offences |
0.020
|
0.012
|
N.S.
|
| Shoplifting |
0.123
|
0.043
|
0.010
|
| Burglary |
0.059
|
0.008
|
0.009
|
| Robbery/mugging |
0.012
|
0.004
|
N.S.
|
| Trespassing |
0.028
|
0
|
0.052
|
| Theft of vehicles |
0.047
|
0.032
|
N.S.
|
| Other theft and property offencesb |
0.111
|
0.032
|
0.020
|
| Other criminal code offencesc |
0.024
|
0.008
|
0.045
|
| Traffic offences |
0.051
|
0.016
|
N.S.
|
| Use/possession of cannabis |
0.130
|
0.047
|
0.036
|
| Use/possession of heroin |
0.715
|
0.123
|
<0.001
|
| Use/posession of cocaine/ecstacy |
0.257
|
0.071
|
<0.001
|
| Use/posession of several substances |
0.124
|
0
|
N.S.
|
| Trafficking/smuggling of any drug |
0.091
|
0.036
|
0.023
|
| Violations of other lawsd |
0.020
|
0
|
0.025
|
| Overall incidence rate |
1.830
|
0.431
|
<0.001
|
aIncidence rates allow- by multiplying the rate by the number of individuals- to calculate the number of contacts recorded (that is 463 contacts were recorded by the police for the period before admission and 109 for the period after admission).
bIncluding receiving stolen property and forgery.
cIncluding fare dodging.
dIncluding searches.
Changes in Police Control of Deviant Behaviour?
Although the trends, as reported in Table II, seem to be very consistent with the drop in self-reported delinquency, the point could be raised whether the lower incidence rates of police-recorded offences may not reflect changed strategies of police control, rather than reduced criminal activity among programme participants. The lower rates after admission to the programme could, theoretically at least, indeed be due to having less chance of addicts to make a police contact after an offence, once they have entered the programme.
In order to assess this in detail, we would need the offence-level data on self-reported police contacts. This information was indeed requested during the interviews and prevalence (that is at an individual level) data are available. If there had been any relevant change in police reaction to crimes committed by programme participants, the prevalence data given in Table III should, however, have reflected it. Thus, Table III indicates, for the two reference periods under consideration, how many programme participants reported police contacts in connection with offences committed, and for how many it was indeed possible to locate a recorded offence (as a suspect) in the police files.
Two interesting trends appear in Table III:
1. Many respondents admitted to having had police contacts, whereas no corresponding record could be located in police files. This may be true particularly for drug offences where many respondents may have indeed been searched by the police, but where, apparently, no formal proceedings were taken. This tendency to ignore (that is not recording) offences seems to apply particularly where pushing cannabis is concerned, and more so before than after admission to the programme. This may reflect increased police control of the drug scene in general, rather than a change in policy towards the participants in the programme in particular.
2. For other offences, the absolute numbers of offenders are, particularly after admission to the programme, often too small to yield reliable rates. But overall, the rates of recorded offences do not seem to change consistently, or strongly, in any direction. Therefore, we may conclude that the changes in police-recorded offences, as indicated in Table II, reflect real changes in behaviour, and not merely a reduced probability of being prosecuted by the police.
TABLE III
Prevalence rates of self reported and recorded police contacts among programme participants, by offence type, before admission and after 6 months of treatment (n=253).
| Offence type |
Before
Reported / Recorded
|
After
Reported / Recorded
|
| Shoplifting |
8.3 / 6.7
|
3.2 / 4.0
|
| Theft and serious property offencesa |
7.1 / 5.5
|
1.2 / 1.2
|
| Trafficking cannabis |
4.3 / 0.4
|
1.2 / 0.8
|
| Trafficking hard drugs |
13.8 / 6.3
|
2.4 / 2.4
|
| Any offence in this table |
26.1 / 17.0
|
6.3 / 7.9
|
aBurglary, mugging, robbery, pick-pocketing, other thefts, receiving stolen property.
Conclusions
The analysis reported here confirms the results based on self-reported delinquency and victimisation data. According to police files, the drop in serious property offences was indeed comparable. As it turned out, this drop was not due to the reduced probability of the police recording offences committed by participants after their admission to the heroin prescription programme.
References
Killias, M. and J. Rabasa, Rapport final sur les effets de la prescription de stupefiants sur la dilinquance des toxicomanes. Lausanne: Institut de Police Scientifique et de Criminologie de l'Universite de Lausanne, 1997.
Killias, M. and J. Rabasa, Auswirkungen der Heroin-Verschreibung auf die Delinquenz Drogenabhangiger: Ergebnisse der Versuche in der Schweiz. Monatsschrift fur Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform, 81 (1). pp. 1- 16. 1998a.
Killias, A and J. Rabasa, Does heroin prescription reduce crime? Results from the evaluation of the Swiss heroin prescription projects. Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention, 7(1), pp. 127-133, 1998b.
Killias, M. and A. Uchtenhagen, Does medical heroin prescription reduce delinquency among drug-addicts? On the evaluation of the Swiss heroin prescription projects and its methodology. Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention, 5(2), pp. 245-256, 1996.
Uchtenhagen, A., Versuche fur eine arztliche Verschreibung von Betaubungsmitteln. Synthesebericht. Zurich: Institut fur Suchtforschung (University of Zurich), 1997.
Copyrighted material. Reprinted by permission.
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