Anti Social Behaviour, distraction burglay, street crime

domestic violence, domestic burglary, drug and alcohol abuse

Drugs and the Communities: The Facts

Communities - To Protect our Communities from Drug-Related Anti-Social and Criminal Behaviour

Helping drug-misusing offenders to tackle their drug problems and become better integrated into society has a significant impact on levels of crime. Local partnerships can work successfully to tackle local drug problems, and to improve the quality of life for communities.

Drugs and crime are of concern to all communities, particularly drug possession, manufacture and trafficking, the involvement of criminal syndicates in the drugs trade, the acquisitive crime committed by drug misusing offenders to feed their habits, and the anti-social behaviour and feeling of menace that the drug culture generates within neighbourhoods. It is very clear that effective enforcement under the 1971 Act and relevant Amendments, remains vital to minimising the availability of drugs and the threats to the community that the drug culture carries in its wake. The criminal justice system operates with considerable discretion within this framework but we must guard against this resulting in inconsistencies. The growing clarity of the relationship between drugs and crime has highlighted that:
many police forces estimate that around half of all recorded crime has some drug related element to it, whether in terms of individual consumption or supply of drugs, or the consequent impact of it on criminal behaviour;

a small number of people are responsible for huge numbers of crimes - 664 addicts surveyed committed 70,000 offences over a three month period;

latest indications from a random sample of suspected offenders arrested by the police suggest that over 600/0 of arrestees have traces of illegal drugs in their urine;

emerging evidence suggests that effective and targeted treatment for drug misusing offenders can have a major impact on reducing subsequent offending;

the general costs to the criminal justice system of drug-related crime are, at a very conservative estimate, at least £1 billion every year;

community safety partnerships - which target specific drugs problems in the community - such as disrupting visible markets, drugs in pubs and clubs, drugs in the workplace and drugs and driving - have great potential where the approach taken is locally based, properly resourced, consistently delivered and long-term.