1 - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

22
pendent effect on the crime level or on the economic behavior of drug users
in general.
The rather low crime level among a substantial proportion of the
Amsterdam sample of hard-core addicts may be fairly typical for the Dutch
circumstances. Our fin'::iu:;!: ~!!,e t;:::infirmed by a longitudinal study among 40
Dutch drug addicts. In this study threle types based on a combined drug
use/criminality index could be distinguished. The most prevalent type (40%
of the cases) was found to consist of respondents who were still addicted
but who at the same time had a very l.ow or zero level of criminality. This
group persisted in such a lifestyle for several years, typically after a
period of heavy addiction and intense criminality (Swierstra, 1990).
In an international perspective two contrary outcomes of an addiction
career seem rather common: 1. the reversal of deviancy into abstinen~e and
resocialisation as a happy outcome (Biernacki 1986) and 2. the spiral df
addiction leading downwards towards (violent) death or longterm imprisonment
as an unhappy one. Such a polarisation of career patterns is probably
less common under the Dutch conditions. In The Netherlands there may be
relatively more drug addicts who ·neither "recover" from their deviant
lifestyle, nor perish under it.
The life style of the "normalized user" population reflects both the
blessings and the drawbacks of an accomodating drug policy. At the one hand
it allows for a lifestyle which is not very harmful, neither for the addict
himself, nor for l'Jociety. At the other hand the welfare culture in which
drug addiction is embedded generates its own secondary rewards. It reinforces
th\~ drug addict's dependency and passivity and undermines .• centives
to break away from the addict life style. The retired, pacified, but
perpetual "junkie" may thus become a typical Dutch phenomenon.
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