DRUGS CAN ENSURE A CAREER IN CRIME

Drug users who spend $2500 a week buying heroin for themselves commit
serious property crimes, according to a study released yesterday.

The study's survey of prisoners jailed for property offences revealed
a close link between illegal drug use and property crime.

The study also found that, contrary to popular belief, illicit drug
use was not the first step that the prisoners had taken down the path
of criminal activity.

Most had begun by shoplifting or similar crimes in their teens, well
before they began using drugs.

The survey of 231 young male prisoners - mainly in their early 20s -
found heroin addicts who regularly committed armed robberies and
assaults and minor crimes of robbery, shoplifting and car theft spent
an average $2500 a week on drugs.

Addicts who regularly committed minor crimes spent an average of $1500
a week. Even regular users arrested only once or twice for property
crime had a heroin habit which cost them $700 a week.

About 73per cent of the prisoners interviewed, when asked by the
researcher if they had ever done so, said they had robbed someone with
a weapon or assaulted someone. About 68per cent said they had been
regularly involved in stealing cars, robbing people or
shoplifting.

The study's author, Dr Toni Makkai, a research analyst with the
Australian Institute of Criminology, said the study revealed important
clues about the prisoners' road to crime.

It found that most prisoners began to commit minor crimes in their
early teens before they went on to take illegal drugs. Those jailed
for serious property crimes began to commit regular minor crimes as
13-year-olds before they became regular drug users and needed to move
on to serious property offences to fund their habit.

Dr Makkai said governments should focus on children involved in
multiple petty crime if they wanted to reduce escalating levels of
drug use and serious property crime.

The preliminary findings of the study were released at the national
conference of the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra,
where Professor Ken Polk, a leading criminologist, also revealed that
violence among teenage boys had risen with the loss of full-time jobs
for early school-leavers.

Professor Polk said violent crimes, mainly assaults and robberies, by
boys under 18 years of age had risen by 40per cent in Victoria between
1990 and 1996.

He said the trend, which was being experienced by other nations, had
started in 1981 when full-time jobs for teenage boys had begun to dry
up. The boys became stuck in ``a social and economic no-man's land''
where violence may have become an attractive option for those trying
to assert their identity.