The Nation : Drugs, Crime Found More Closely Tied

The association between drug use and crime rose sharply over a 12-year span ending in 1986, the government reported. About 35% of the nation’s state prison inmates in 1986 were under the influence of an illegal drug at the time they committed the crime for which they were then incarcerated, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics said. Twelve years earlier, the rate was about 25%, while in 1979, it was 32%. The survey said that many inmates began to use drugs only after their criminal careers had already started. The report also found that the greater the use of major drugs, the more prior convictions of all types the inmate reported and that white inmates and female inmates were somewhat more likely to have been regular users of major drugs at some point in their lives.