§ Simon HughesTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will estimate how many people there are in Greater London, who are addicted to drugs, broken down by borough. [173252]
§ Caroline FlintThe Home Office does not collect specific information on the number of people in Greater London who are addicted to drugs.
§ Simon HughesTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will estimate what proportion of crime in Greater London was connected to drug addiction in each year since 1997, broken down by borough. [173253]
§ Ms BlearsRecorded crime figures, which are used to measure trends in crime, include statistics on drugs offences, such as possession, and on property crimes, such as burglary, do not record whether the latter are related to an offender's drug habits. There are therefore no figures currently available for the proportion of crime in Greater London, by borough, which was connected to drug addiction.
The Home Office sponsored New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) survey, which invokes interviewing and drug testing those arrested by the police, provides an insight into the proportion of crimes that are drug related. However, this survey does not provide sub-national data and is also not nationally representative.
A comparison of the survey's findings from eight sites across the country (including custody suites in Bethnal Green and Hammersmith) visited in 1999 and 2002, indicate that there was no change in the proportion of arrestees testing positive for one or more of six illicit drugs. Nearly two-thirds (65 per cent.) of arrestees in each year tested positive for any drug.