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Mr. Simmonds: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many crimes committed in Lincolnshire were drug-related ineach year from 1997 to 2002. [94202]Mr. Bob Ainsworth: Recorded crime figures include statistics on drugs offences, such as possession, and on acquisitive crimes, suchas burglary, but do not record whether the latter are related to an offender's drug habits.However, the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) research programme, which involves interviewing anddrug testing those arrested by the police, confirms a link between drug misuse and crime, although the conclusions do not relatespecifically to Lincolnshire. Analysis of the data from the first eight sites in the survey, collected during 1999-2000, shows that65 per cent. of arrestees provided a urine sample that tested positive for one or more illegal drug. The analysis also shows that upto 29 per cent. of arrestees tested positive for opiates (including heroin) and/or cocaine (including crack).As a guide to the proportion of crime that is drug- related, analysis of the NEW-ADAM self-report data indicates that whilst only 21per cent. of non-drug using arrestees reported having previously offended in the past 12 months, this figure rises to 75 per cent.for those arrestees who use heroin and/or cocaine/crack. Moreover, whilst users of both heroin and cocaine/crack represented justunder one-quarter of all arrestees interviewed, they were responsible for more than three- fifths of all the illegal incomereported.In support of this, 55 per cent. of arrestees who reported using one or more drugs in the last 12 months and committing one or moreacquisitive crimes acknowledged a link between their drug use and their offending behaviour. This proportion rose to 78 per cent.for arrestees who said they had used heroin and cocaine/crack. |