Drugs and Delinquency

The addiction and conviction status of 60 male patients who presented to a London drug clinic in 1970 was re-examined 10 years later. Eleven of the patients had died. Three-quarters of the survivors had been abstinent for five years and one quarter were still addicted in this time. Ninety-seven per cent had received a court conviction by 1981 and 83 per cent were convicted during follow-up. Neither hospital treatment, receipt of a clinic prescription nor imprisonment was associated with eventual abstinence. Poor outcome, in combined terms of continued addiction and re-conviction, related to early parental loss, poor academic achievement, conviction before drug use, longer imprisonment and a high conviction rate. Criminality emerges as the predominant and continuing expression of deviancy in these drug clinic patients.