Drugs and Crime in Lifestyle Perspective (Drugs, Health, and Social Policy)

glenn D. Walter's Short Book Drugs And Crime In Lifestyle Perspective Is Another Gem; It Works Purposefully With The Complexity And Diversity Of The Drugs-crime Linkages And Connections Insisting That Traditional Ways Of Researching And Intervening With Those Caught Up In Deviant Lifestyles Where Drugs And Crime Are Endemic, Are Unproductive. This Is A Book For 'thinking' Practitioners And Those Concerned With Creating Local Multiagency Policy Or Working With Drug Users And Offenders Selling Or Using Drugs. It Offers No Easy Assessments Or Solutions But Is The More Productive For That. --howard Parker In British Journal Of booknews proposes A New Explanatory Model Of The Link Between Drugs And Crime, Seeing Them As Overlapping Lifestyles Connected By Commonalities In Thinking And Behavior. Considers Four Factors: Conditions, Choices, Cognitions, And Change. The New Series Is Projected To Produce Four Volumes A Year Reporting On Research Helpful To Professionals And Students In Public Health And Criminal Justice. Annotation C. Book News, Inc., Portland, Or (booknews.com) A feature of the lifestyle model that reflects its utility is the unified explanation it offers for drug abuse, crime, and the drug-crime connection. Drug abuse and criminal activity are conceptualized as overlapping lifestyles that, although distinct, are nonetheless bound by a common set of variables. Historical-developmental conditions, the focus of most traditional perspectives on the drug-crime connection, not only fail to explain the drug-crime overlap but in many cases show opposing patterns for these two forms of deviant behavior. Emotions and motivations are incorporated in the lifestyle theory; the theory purports to assist the individual by acknowledging the presence of existential fear and reinforcing the individual's adaptive resources. Lifestyle theory asserts that assimilation and accommodation are ways in which the individual manages his or her existential fear of change and uncertainty. The author indicates that the most common pathway between drug abuse and crime involves situations in which drug use causes crime by loosening inhibitions, distorting judgment, fostering criminal associations, or creating a need for money. 369 references, 1 table, and 2 figures (publisher-supplied Data) Glenn D. Walter's Short Book Drugs And Crime In Lifestyle Perspective Is Another Gem; It Works Purposefully With The Complexity And Diversity Of The Drugs-crime Linkages And Connections Insisting That Traditional Ways Of Researching And Intervening With Those Caught Up In Deviant Lifestyles Where Drugs And Crime Are Endemic, Are Unproductive. This Is A Book For 'thinking' Practitioners And Those Concerned With Creating Local Multiagency Policy Or Working With Drug Users And Offenders Selling Or Using Drugs. It Offers No Easy Assessments Or Solutions But Is The More Productive For That.--howard Parker In British Journal Of. The Drug-crime Connection -- Conditions -- Choice -- Cognition Change -- The Drug-crime Connection Reconsidered. Glenn D. Walters. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 103-121) And Index. This volume explores the correlation between drug abuse and crime. In examining the thinking and behavioural patterns common to both, it proposes a new explanatory model. Seeing involvement in drug abuse and crime as overlapping lifestyles, the author considers four primary factors: conditions, choices, cognitions and change. By comparing this new model with existing models, Walters provides new insight into drug abuse, crime and their overlap