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Drugs and Delinquency

A Ten Year Follow-up of Drug Clinic Patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Alistair M. Gordon
Alistair M. Gordon*
Affiliation:
The Retreat, York, YO1 5BN
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Summary

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.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 142 , Issue 2 , February 1983 , pp. 169 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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