Assessing UK drug policy from a crime control perspective
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895808096473 |
| Published date | 01 November 2008 |
| Author | Alex Stevens,Peter Reuter |
| Date | 01 November 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
461
Assessing UK drug policy from a crime
control perspective
PETER REUTER AND ALEX STEVENS
University of Maryland, USA and University of Kent, UK
Abstract
Over the entire last quarter of the 20th century the British drug problem
worsened, despite the implementation of a variety of approaches and
commitment of substantial criminal justice and other resources. The
link between chronic use of expensive drugs and property crime
makes this experience important for understanding trends in crime
and justice in Britain. The worsening of the problem can be seen in
the growing number of new heroin users each year over almost the
entire period 1975–2000, on top of which was layered, starting in the
late 1990s, the first major outbreak of chronic cocaine use. This was
not the common pattern in Western Europe over that time and by
2000 the UK had Western Europe’s most serious drug problem.
One component of the response has been increasing enforcement
against drug markets; in just the decade 1994–2005 the number of
prison cell years handed out in annual sentences has tripled. Even
with this expansion we estimate that the annual probability of
incarceration for a class A drug dealer is only approximately 6 per cent.
Since 2000 there has also been a massive increase in treatment
resources linked to the criminal justice system. The number of treatment
assessments in recent years has been as large as 58 per cent of the
number of persons estimated to be problematic users of Class A
drugs. The government believes that drug policy has contributed to
the decline in crime in the UK since 2000. Using what is known about
treatment outcomes, we argue that despite impressive evidence of
effect on individual level offending, the effect of treatment expansion
in reducing overall crime rates is likely to have been limited.
Key Words
crime • drugs • enforcement • estimation • prevention • treatment
Criminology & Criminal Justice
© 2008 SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
and the British Society of Criminology.
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1748–8958; Vol: 8(4): 461–482
DOI: 10.1177/1748895808096473
Introduction
Illicit drugs have been a prominent issue in public policy in the United
Kingdom at least since the 1970s, much discussed by politicians and the
media. Prime Ministerial interventions even over matters as minor as the clas-
sification of marijuana are a staple of recent political debates. Over the entire
last quarter of the 20th century the British drug problem worsened, despite the
implementation of a variety of approaches and commitment of substantial
criminal justice and other resources. Post-2000 there are consistent indicators
that drug use has declined in the general population and that the prevalence
of dependence on heroin and cocaine may have stabilized.
The link between chronic use of expensive drugs and property crime
makes this experience important for understanding trends in crime and just-
ice in Britain. This article, based on a larger study (Reuter and Stevens,
2007) supplemented by later analysis of the estimation of drug-related
crime (Stevens, 2008), assesses the effectiveness of efforts to reduce drug
markets and dependence and how these have affected crime in Britain.
What is striking is that, despite a relatively pragmatic and evidence-oriented
approach to drug policy in the past decade, there is little indication of sub-
stantial reductions in drug problems. Our final section argues that drug
policy can play only a modest role in reducing drug use, though it can play
a slightly more significant one in reducing drug-related crime.
The growth of the British drug problem
Drug use
Recent years have seen debates about whether drug use has become ‘nor-
malized’ in the UK (Parker et al., 1998), with widespread use by young
people, ‘social accommodation’ of ‘sensible’ users by young people who do
not use drugs (Parker, 2005) and ‘cultural accommodation’ of drug use,
including frequent drug references in advertising, television programmes
and films (Blackman, 2004). Others have stressed the abstinence of many
young people and continuing normative disapproval of drug users (Shiner
and Newburn, 1999). This debate has recently moved towards synthesis
(Measham and Shiner, 2008) and neither side has disputed that there have
been very important increases in drug use in recent decades. The most
widely used drug is cannabis. Despite recent concerns about the rapid
expansion of the market for high-potency sinsemilla cannabis (known as
skunk), often grown by commercial growers inside the UK, heroin and
crack cocaine are considered to be more important than cannabis in influ-
encing levels of crime (PMSU, 2003). So we focus here on trends in the use
of these two drugs.
The available indicators of heroin and cocaine use are notoriously unre-
liable. Drug users may be reluctant to acknowledge use when interviewed
Criminology & Criminal Justice 8(4)462
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