The relationship between drugs and crime and its implications for recovery and desistance

Abstract

The chapter locates the book within a growing body of work establishing the link between desistance from crime and recovery from drug use, examining both the methodological and structural associations between the two phenomena. Thus, in addition to overlapping populations (people in recovery who are able to stop offending, and offenders who can stop their offending and as a result move away from problem drug use), there are major overlaps in terms of the mechanisms of change. The introduction outlines how these overlaps are reviewed in terms of conceptual frameworks, change mechanisms, applications and interventions, before concluding with an overview of common themes and future directions