Theft and drug crimes dominate re-offending as research points to addiction link

Theft and drug offences are among the most common crimes committed by people after leaving Irish prisons, show new Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures.

Overall, the percentage who left prison and reoffended within a year dropped a touch in 2023, compared to 2022, the figures show. It went from 44 percent, to 42 percent.

But, the offences committed by those who returned to crime were heavily concentrated in a small number of categories.

Of the 1,251 people who re-offended, almost two-thirds committed offences involving theft, public order or controlled drugs.

Theft was the largest category, with 373 re-offenders, followed by public order offences at 319 and controlled drug-related offences at 124.

The figures do not establish that drug or alcohol dependency caused those offences.

But international research shows a strong association between the same types of “acquisitive offending” – meaning a crime, like theft, aimed at acquiring property – and serious drug dependency.

Given that the Irish Prison Service estimates that upwards of 70 percent of incarcerated people have some form of substance addiction, the figures mirror the research.

Criminologist Keith Adams, penal policy advocate with the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice (JCFJ), says that these types of “crimes of need” are common among people in the throes of addiction.

Addiction is of course not the only driver of such behaviour, he said.

“If they are ultimately crimes of a need specific to that person who commits the offence," he says. "If that material need isn't met, then there's nothing really to kind of prevent those offences happening again after they're released."

If they haven't got the resources to provide for themself and their family, or if they haven't got help to get over their addiction, "then it's very unreasonable for us to expect those crimes to end by a short prison sentence”, Adams said.

“That's not going to solve it,” he says. “It's more than likely going to just exacerbate it as well.”

Theft offenders have high re-offending rate

The CSO figures, published in July, show that people originally imprisoned for theft were themselves particularly likely to return to crime.

Some 578 people were released from sentences for theft offences in 2023, the largest single offence group among the 2,987 releases examined.

Of these, 338 – or 58 percent – re-offended within a year. Only those released after public order offences had a higher re-offending rate, at 67 percent.

Burglary also stands out in the figures.

Among people who re-offended, those originally imprisoned for burglary were among the groups most likely to be sent back to prison: 44 percent received another custodial sanction.

The CSO stresses that the crime for which somebody was originally imprisoned is not necessarily the same type of offence they subsequently commit.

Nevertheless, the latest statistics show theft and drug offences occupying a prominent place in the pattern of repeat offending.

International evidence of drugs-crime link

One substantial study of the relationship between drugs and offending was a 2008 meta-analysis by criminologists Trevor Bennett, Katy Holloway and David Farrington, published in the peer-reviewed journal Aggression and Violent Behavior.

The researchers examined 30 previous studies and found that the odds of offending were between approximately three and four times greater among drug users than non-drug users.

The relationship varied substantially according to the drug involved and was strongest among crack cocaine users.

Significantly, the association remained across acquisitive offences including burglary, robbery and shoplifting – as well as prostitution.

A subsequent systematic review of research into opiate use and offending, published in 2017, examined 20 studies from the UK and US. It found evidence from individual studies of increases in acquisitive offending following the onset of opiate use, including theft, burglary and robbery.

Large-scale research in England has also found a particularly strong relationship between opiate use and acquisitive offending.

A 2017 study, "Insights into the link between drug use and criminality: Lifetime offending of criminally-active opiate users", compared the offending histories of almost 19,000 people who tested either positive for both opiates and cocaine or just opiates, with about 79,000 offenders who tested negative for both opiates and cocaine.

It found that opiate-positive offenders already had higher offending rates before beginning opiate use, but that the difference increased further following the onset of opiate use.

The increase was particularly pronounced for non-serious acquisitive offences, such as shoplifting, rather than more serious offences such as burglary.

A Norwegian study of about 3,800 dependent heroin users provides another picture of the types of crime involved.

Researchers linked treatment records with national conviction data and examined just over 24,000 convictions recorded during the three years before participants started opioid maintenance treatment.

Acquisitive crime accounted for 55.9 percent of all convictions.

When drug offences were added, the two categories represented 77.4 percent of convictions – the majority of which, the study says, were “less-aggravated offenses”.

Criminologist Robert Cullen notes that, as a measure of success, the reoffending rate is problematic.

“It legitimises the need for prison rather than focusing attention on preventing the first offence, which is what we really need to do,” he says.

There's a huge number of people who have undiagnosed neurodiversity in prison, which can be heavily linked to addiction, he says.

“Then there's the trauma of poverty, and community violence exposure that happens within communities that are generationally systemically deprived,” he says.

There are systemic factors that contribute to people becoming homeless, engaging in theft, and being left in addiction, he says.

“If we really want to measure success, we should be measuring it off how many children we can prevent from going on to become addicted, to become homeless, you know, and then ultimately ending up in a prison and having offended,” he says.

Cullen says that the evidence shows prison is “criminogenic”. “Like prison increases people's chances of committing more crime,” he says.

Irish context

A report from the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) published this year, which Cullen worked on as a researcher, also identifies substance dependency as a pathway into repeated contact with the criminal justice system.

The report, "From Punishment to Prevention: Poverty, Inequality and Pathways into the Irish Criminal Justice System", says substance dependence can act as a “key mediator in pathways from poverty into criminalisation”.

“In communities experiencing deprivation, drug use can function as coping in the context of chronic stress, trauma, exclusion and limited access to timely mental health and addiction supports,” it says.

It adds that a positive Irish policy reaction to this is the HSE’s 2023 Model of Care for Dual Diagnosis.

But, it says, “recent evidence suggests dual diagnosis remains a practical barrier to support, with mental health, addiction, housing and justice services still often operating in isolation and high access thresholds continuing to exclude some of those with the most complex needs”.

The report notes that some people offend to finance a dependency, while intoxication can contribute to risk-taking and public order incidents.

Drug debts can also pull people further into offending.

“Research in Dublin’s North-East Inner City described people being forced to ‘work off’ debts by carrying items, running errands, or taking drugs from A to B, tasks that deepen exposure to criminalisation,” the IPRT study says.

Crucially in the context of re-offending, the report argues that substance use and criminalisation can reinforce one another, drawing people into “repeated cycles of enforcement, instability and imprisonment” which can make recovery more difficult.

It also points to a broader socioeconomic trend.

Irish research cited in the report, which focused on the post-financial crash era, found that a 10 percent rise in unemployment was associated with a 5 percent increase in thefts and burglaries.

Addiction is widespread among the prison population itself.

The Irish Prison Service has estimated that upwards of 70 percent of people committed to prison have a drug and/or alcohol addiction.

The most recent available figures from last September showed that over 900 people were on waiting lists for addiction supports across the Irish prison estate, with the largest number, 242, in Mountjoy Prison — a quarter of its entire population.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.