HC Deb 25 February 2003 vol 400 c408W
Mr. Gibb

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the relationship between Class A drug addiction and recidivism among criminal offenders [98138]

Mr. Bob Ainsworth

Information is not available in the form requested. However, the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring research programme, which involves interviewing and drug testing those arrested by the police at 16 sites throughout England and Wales, currently provides estimates of repeat offending by drug misusing offenders. Repeat offending drug misusing offenders are defined as the proportion of arrestees who are using heroin and/or cocaine and/or crack at least once a week and who have offended at least twice a month in the last 12 months. Analysis of the data from the first eight sites in the survey, collected during 1999–2000, shows the proportion of arrestees falling within the definition of repeat offending drug misusing offenders category was 15 per cent.