Drugs and crime

This report examines the illegal drug using and criminal careers of participants in the Drug Use Careers of Offenders (DUCO) project. DUCO surveyed 2,135 adult male offenders who were incarcerated in prisons in Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory in mid 2001. The study focuses on the development of the criminal career, drawing comparisons among regular offenders of different offence typologies and comments on a variety of risk factors associated with offending. It explores the intersection of drug use and criminal behaviour and estimates that just over one third of all offenders causally attributed alcohol and/or illegal drugs to the offence/s for which they were incarcerated.