The Employment Prospects of Scottish and English Drug Abusers

In this paper the employment of Scottish and English self- reporting drug users is considered using data drawn from the Scottish and British Crime Surveys. Univariate and bivariate estimates of the probability of being employed reveal a robustly negative and statistically significant association between a number of measures of drug use and current employment. These results hold for separate samples of Scottish and English respondents, and confirm recent findings for the United States. We also highlight the paucity of data available for this type of research, particularly for Scotland, and suggest that this ought to be a serious concern for policy makers charged with implementing and monitoring polices aimed at tackling drugs misuse and its cost to society.Illicit drugs; Unemployment; Endogeneity

The Use of Self-Report and Drugs Tests in the Measurement of Illicit Drug Consumpiton

We use data from the New England and Wales Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) programme to assess the validity of self-report measures of illicit drug use and to evaluate the use of alternative drug testing strategies within survey enquiries. Our analysis of the NEW-ADAM data reveals that bio-assay measurements of drug use tend not to be very sensitive to the cut-off levels selected for screening tests, a result that holds for cannabis, cocaine and opiates. We also show that a self-reported history of previous drug use can be used as a way of identifying individuals who are potential under-reporters of current drug use. This suggests a selective drug testing strategy which can reduce dramatically the cost of drug testing without comprising the accuracy of measurements of illicit drug use.Drugs testing; Self-reports; Concordance; Testing Strategies

Offenders as Victims of Crime? An Investigation into the Relationship Between Criminal Behaviour and Victimisation

In this paper we consider the association between victimisation and offending behaviour using data from the Youth Lifestyles Survey. We consider the impact of violent, non-violent and persistent offending on the probability of being a victim of violent and non-violent crime and find a positive association between these using univariate probit estimates. However, taking into account the endogenous nature of offending and victimisation via a bivariate probit model, we find that univariate estimates understate the association. We suggest that policy recommendations should only be based on the bivariate analysis of the association between offending and victimisation.

What Price Drug Use? The Contribution of Economics to an Evidence-Based Drugs Policy

This paper presents a review of the recent economics literature in the area of illicit drug use. Particular attention is paid to the economics of addiction and the rational addiction model, the welfare economics framework for analysing the social costs of drug use, and the attempts that have been made by economists to evaluate recent or proposed policy interventions. A dominant theme in this review is the problem of poor data availability. This is particularly true when it comes to implementing the Rational Addiction model, but it is also apparent in the literature on estimating the costs of illicit drug use to society as a whole. One of the main conclusions of this review is that until recently public policy has not been particularly influenced by research carried out by economists. It is not clear whether this is because economists have had to grapple with inadequate data, and hence their conclusions are couched in uncertainty, or whether it is because drugs researchers have assumed a very limited role for economists in their analysis. Public Sector Economics Research Centre, Department of Economics, University of Leicester. I am grateful to Steve Pudney for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft. Remaining errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the author.

The Under-Reporting of Property Crime: A Microeconometric Analysis.

In this paper we use data from the 1994 and 1996 British Crime Surveys (BCS) to examine the influence of socio-economic factors on the reporting of crime. Through probit estimation, we find that the probability of a burglary being reported is significantly reduced if the individual is currently unemployed or has been engaged in illicit activity over the past year. We also find that, as anticipated, the reporting likelihood is much increased if the incident involves a positively valued loss. Using decomposition techniques, we also show that this result is not driven by differences in mean sample characteristics. Our results suggest that the difference between the recorded crime rate and the true crime rate is not constant through the economic cycle. This may have implications for models of crime and economic activity that make use of recorded crime figures