Term
| Generally, explanations for how drug use causes criminal behavior fall into two broad categories, pharmacological explanations and economic explanations. |
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Definition
Pharmacological explanations: "suggest that criminal behavior is a direct effect of a drugs' chemical qualities on the human organism. (a drug may cause a person to think irrationally and therefore act irrationally, or drugs may lower one's ability to engage in self-control, resulting in impulsive criminal acts.)
economic explanations: the expensive nature of drugs and their addictive qualities are a sure recipe for crime, "economic-compulsive model"- Goldstein. Fact is with heroin, cocaine, and other expensive drugs, users frequently lower the level of their use to accommodate unfavorable circumstances |
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Definition
| suggests that drug intoxication affects central nervous system functions that presumably control or inhibit aggression. Only orientated toward violent crimes, empirical evidence suggest that direct, pharmacologically based violence is rare. disinhibition effects are thought to be learned, rather than directly produced by pharmacological effects. the disinhibition hypothesis is the most extensively criticized, but most widely accepted, at least among the general public. |
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Definition
| one that appears causal, but in fact both variables are related in the same way to a third variable. The result is a correlation between the two variables in question. Observers of the drug scene note that most drug using criminals begin committing crimes at an earlier age than they begin using at least expensive drugs such as heroin or cocaine that are purported to cause crime because of their addictive and costly nature. *Rather than interpret this sequence to mean that crime causes drug use, however, the common-cause explanation understands both drug use and criminal behavior to be products of a cultural system that promotes and rewards these behaviors* |
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Term
| three main major policy alternatives: One suggested fourth: |
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Definition
| prohibition (criminalization), legalization, and decriminalization; harm reduction |
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Term
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Definition
| refers to the policy of criminalization, whereby the production, manufacture, growing, selling, and/or possession of drugs are violations of one or more criminal statues. illegal status of drugs creates breeding ground for subculture, as we see with cigarettes and heroin. cigarettes are legal and smoked by all social classes, ethnicity, genders, etc. |
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Term
| prohibition approach: source reduction |
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Definition
| reduce the amount of illegal drugs produced in the first place. can be effective because of organized hierarchy. domestic |
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Term
| prohibition approach: border interdiction |
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Definition
| seeks to prevent illegal drugs from entering the US after leaving the borders of producing nations. |
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Definition
| suppression in one area is followed by distribution networks popping up in other areas. |
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Term
| Advantages of Prohibition: |
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Definition
| results in fewer people using substances that may be potentially very harmful to them and those around them. Second, sends an important, symbolic message about virtues valued by Americans such as sobriety and self-control |
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Term
| Disadvantages of Prohibition |
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Definition
| increased arrests have clogged court dockets, creating a need for more judges, prosecutors, and in many cases, more courts, including special drug courts. Great cost to taxpayers, prison overcrowding. all hurt taxpayers. by criminalizing drugs, we automatically increase the level of crime in society. Systemic violence: resulting from the operation of illegal drug markets. criminal violence over drug trade, would not exist if drug was legal. increases potency of drugs, decreases drug education, encourages bribery and corruption in police force and other narcotic agencies, cost to civil liberties: search and seizure, profiling, privacy, wiretapping. hurts health (potency, needle-sharing) |
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Term
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Definition
| involves the lifting of all criminal and civil prohibitions and sanctions. advocates usually interested in either public health or civil liberties (rarely both): three approaches: laissez faire model, the limited distribution model, and the medical model |
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