vision2020
60-70% of crimes traced to substance abuses
A statement such as the one Ken made (quoted below) is very hard to
interpret.
As sec@moscow.com pointed out, there is also correlation that indicates
prohibition causes violent crimes to increase. Also, the statement
compresses all (some, a few?) drugs into "substances." Does "substances"
include alcohol? Do the 60-70% of crimes include alcohol related crimes?
How do the crimes per a particular substance break down? Maybe there is no
correlation between pot smoking and crime, but there is between heroin use
and crime.
And finally, the conclusion that social values are DIRECTLY related to our
criminal behaviors is unwarranted, first because you have to establish
that there is causation to be able to say DIRECTLY related (i.e. there is
obviously correlation between crime and substance abuse--if for no other
reason than most substance ab(use) is defined by our laws as a crime--but
that does not mean there is a DIRECT causal relationship of the sort: If
person A smokes pot they will then commit crime X), second because "social
values" is too ambiguous a term--there are lots of social groups in this
town/state/country/world with different values who may agree on what are
criminal behaviors, or alternately there are criminal behaviors that are
socially positive (e.g. civil disobedience), and third, because while our
"social values" generally are disapproving of drug use and crime, these
activities continue.
On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Ken Medlin wrote:
> Data I've seen reveal that about 60-70% of crimes can be traced to
> substance abuses. Our social values are directly related to our criminal
> behaviors, no?
>
> ------------------------
> William K. Medlin
> Dev-plan associates
> 930 Kenneth Street
> Moscow ID 83843
> 208/892-0148
> dev-plan@moscow.com
>
-------------------------------------
Robert Anton-Erik
anton933@uidaho.edu
http://www.ets.uidaho.edu/rob/
"The medium is not the message,
the message is the message."
-------------------------------------
Back to TOC