Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-hvd4g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-24T06:59:05.196Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Drugs and Delinquency: A Four Year Follow-up of Drug Clinic Patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Alistair M. Gordon
Alistair M. Gordon*
Affiliation:
Academic Department of Psychiatry, St Mary's Hospital, Harrow Road, London W9 3RL
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The addiction and conviction status of 60 male patients, examined at a London drug clinic in 1970 was reassessed at four-year follow-up. Forty-three per cent had become abstinent, 23 per cent remained dependent and 15 per cent had died. Ninety-seven per cent had received a court conviction and 73 per cent were convicted during follow-up. A prognostic assessment was determined in combined terms of continued addiction and continued delinquency. Poor outcome related to a lack of educational attainment, earlier first conviction and regular opiate use on arrival, and was associated during follow-up with an irregular clinic attendance beyond one year, drug conviction and death. Good outcome related to an absence of parental loss and later first conviction, and was associated during follow-up with discharge within one year without hospital admission. Analysis of the data indicates the value of combining forensic information with drug history in prognostic assessment.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 132 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 21 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1978 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

De Alarcon, R. (1973) Lessons from the recent British drug outbreak. Proceedings of the Anglo-American Conference on Drug Abuse. Royal Society of Medicine.Google Scholar
D'Orban, P. (1974) A follow-up study of female narcotic addicts: variables related to outcome. British Journal of Psychiatry, 124, 28–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, A. M. (1973) Patterns of delinquency in drug addiction. British Journal of Psychiatry, 122, 205–10.Google Scholar
Kosviner, A. et al (1968) Heroin use in a provincial town. Lancet, i, 1189–92.Google Scholar
Levy, B. S. (1972) Five years after: a follow-up of 50 narcotic addicts. American Journal of Psychiatry, 128, 868–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mott, J. (1975) Criminal histories of male non-medical opiate users in the United Kingdom. Bulletin of Narcotics, 27(4), 41–8.Google ScholarPubMed
Mott, J. & Rathod, N. H. (1976) Heroin misuse and delinquency in a New Town. British Journal of Psychiatry, 128, 428–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mott, J. & Taylor, M. (1974) Delinquency Among Opiate Users. Home Office Research Studies, No. 23. HMSO.Google Scholar
Stephens, R. & Cottrell, E. (1972) A follow-up study of 200 narcotic addicts committed for treatment under the Narcotic Rehabilitation Act. British Journal of Addiction, 67, 45–53.Google ScholarPubMed
Oppenheim, G. B. et al (1973) Out-patient treatment of narcotic addiction: who benefits? British Journal of Addiction, 68, 37–44.Google Scholar
Vaillant, G. E. (1966a) A twelve-year follow-up of New York narcotic addicts: some characteristics and determinants of abstinence. American Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 573–84.Google Scholar
Wadsworth, M. E. J. (1975) Delinquency in a national sample of children. British Journal of Criminology, 15, 167–74.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.