Theories on the causal relationship between drug use and crime in Australian literature have often overlooked the influence of gender as a confounding variable while research indicates that pathways into drug use and crime differ for males and females. Using data from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Drug Use Monitoring in Australia program, this report...

This report finds differences in drug use between male and female detainees and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous female detainees, highlighting different patterns of drug usage and dependencies and of associated most serious offences leading to arrest. The Drug Use Monitoring in Australia program makes a quarterly assessment of drug use by police detainees around Australia.

Reported drug use is compared with urinalysis data. DUMA has been reporting since 1999.

Using data from the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia program, this paper examines the prevalence of drug driving among a sample of police detainees in 2005 and 2006. It found that two-thirds had driven after using drugs and/or alcohol in the previous 12 months, which is significantly higher than the incidence of drug driving in...

This year’s report includes data from two new sites in Melbourne and Darwin, to give a broader picture of drug use and criminal activity across Australia. The report provides comprehensive data for 2006 and trend analysis from the start of the program in 1999. In 2006 more than half the detainees tested positive to cannabis...