The Clinton administration released a report this month highlighting the link between illicit drug use and crime, calling for increased spending on drug treatment in prisons, and "zero tolerance" for drug use in prisons. But obscured in the public discussion of the report is the fact that the data shows that alcohol use is just as strongly associated with crime as use of illicit drugs.The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report, "Substance Abuse and Treatment, State and Federal Prisoners, 1997," discusses alcohol and other drugs at length, and makes clear that both are strongly associated with crime. All told, 51 percent of offenders said they were under the influence of alcohol or other drugs at the time of their offense, and three-quarters of all inmates were characterized by researchers as being "alcohol- or drug-involved."
However, the portions of the data highlighted by the administration and the media played up the drug-crime link; in fact, neither President Clinton nor drug czar Barry McCaffrey even mentioned alcohol during their remarks on the report.
That doesn't sit well with prevention advocates like Linda Y. Fisher, executive director of the D.C. Community Partnership. "By just addressing the illicit drug aspects, they're letting the alcohol industry off the hook," Fisher told Join Together. Added Judy Cushing, president of the National Family Partnership and executive director of the Oregon Partnership, "Alcohol is really the forgotten drug when it comes to our national efforts ... I think we're going to have to wake up some day to that fact that alcohol has a much more significant link to crime and violence."
In the BJS report itself, illicit-drug involvement by offenders is categorized in terms of lifetime use and monthly use, while past use of alcohol is defined in terms of "abuse" measures, such as binge drinking and alcohol dependence. So whereas past use of illicit drugs is used to infer a relationship with crime, no such inference is drawn for past use of alcohol. This may be in line with government policy (which states that all illicit drug use is abuse), but for comparing the relative relationship between alcohol and other drugs to crime, it's strictly apples and oranges.
There is, however, one category where the relationship between alcohol and illicit drugs is clearly considered on equal grounds by the BJS report: use at the time the prisoner committed the offense for which he or she was incarcerated. Here, a comparison reveals that alcohol and other drugs have roughly equal roles in crime: 37 percent of state inmates and 20 percent of federal inmates reported being under the influence of alcohol at the time of their offense, compared to 33 percent of state offenders and 22 percent of federal offenders who said they were under the influence of illicit drugs when they committed their crimes.
The BJS report also shows that alcohol plays a greater role in assault, murder and sexual assault than illicit drugs. In fact, 42 percent of state prisoners and 25 percent of federal prisoners convicted of violent offenses reported being under the influence of alcohol at the time they committed their crime, compared to 29 percent of violent state offenders and 25 percent of violent federal offenders who said they were high on drugs when they committed their crime.
Not surprisingly, prisoners who were under the influence of illicit drugs when they committed their crime were more likely to have been convicted of drug offenses than those who were under the influence of alcohol. Also, one in six offenders reported that they committed their crime to get money to buy illicit drugs.
Official silence on the alcohol-related data in the BJS report, which was released in conjunction with announcing a $120 million initiative to fund more prison drug treatment, testing, and enforcement, was for good political reasons, advocates say: Congress is far more likely to support "anti drug" treatment than "anti-alcohol" treatment. "I think it's more politics than running scared from the industry," said Fisher. "It's easier, and resonates better, to talk about drugs than alcohol." Furthermore, said Fisher, policymakers are more interested in hearing about treatment in the context of crime prevention than as a public-health intervention.
Cushing said that if community leaders want to see national prevention policies address alcohol as well as other drugs they need "the courage to stand up and buck the system." But she said that prevention groups and coalitions also need to educate legislators about the problems that alcohol causes.
Still, both crime-prevention and addiction advocates are encouraged by the administration's focus on providing treatment to inmates -- treatment that presumably will not draw distinctions between alcohol and other drug addictions. According to the 1997 BJS report, the need for increasing prison-based treatment is great. Of all prisoners classified as being drug-involved, only 15 percent reported receiving treatment during their current sentence, down from 33 percent in 1991.
Among those who had used drugs at the time of their offense, 18 percent reported receiving treatment in prison, compared to 40 percent in 1991. And only about 14 percent of inmates who were under the influence of alcohol when they committed their crime reported in 1997 that they had received addiction treatment in prison.
Highlights and analysis of the BJS special report on substance abuse and treatment of prisoners is available online.
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