Crack cocaine in the Dublin region - Health Research Board

6.3 Economic compulsive crime: crack and acquisitive crimeCrack and theft offencesDuring the in-depth interviews, 6 of the 10 crack users stated that they had beenor were currently involved in committing crimes such as shoplifting, burglary androbbery to sustain their crack cocaine habit. In some cases the stolen goods would beexchanged directly for crack.You go out shoplifting you know what I mean… It’s mainly how I do it anyway you know.Down the country shoplifting or you know… Because all the shops up here I’m known inevery one, I can’t get into them you know, so I have to go down to Cork sometimes, Galway,Limerick.OK and would you come back up to Dublin then and buy it?Ah straight away yeah, straight away. And probably like you know whenever I go outshoplifting I probably know the jeans or nice jackets, nice jumpers, nice shirts and all that,they probably say well look it we’ll give you so many rocks for the lot you know what I mean?Or say we’ll give you 2/300 pounds and we’ll give you eight rocks or whatever, you knowthat way?Clondalkin, current crack user (September 2007)I used to go around shoplifting, I used to rob hotels and rob houses and burglary is somethingthat I would never do in the past, because I remember when we were going on holidays whenwe were kids we got burgled and it was horrible. And for me then when I was on crack, togo and do it, I used to just block it out of my mind, when I was doing it, because I just knewit was going to get me money for crack.north-east Dublin, former crack user (October 2007)Staff in several drug-treatment services were aware of the criminal activities thatfunded their clients’ crack cocaine use.Most of the fellas are doing it like jump overs… A jump over is jumping over [e.g. a shopcounter] and robbing, it’s either they are doing shops…It’s quick money.north-east Dublin, outreach worker (September 2007)I think with two of the girls they have increased their shoplifting in order to be able to fundthis and both of them would have stopped a lot of criminal behaviour before their crackrelapse. So as a result of that, they’ve gone back to shoplifting…in order to fund the habit.north-inner city, training and education programme (November 2007)72 Crack cocaine in the Dublin region: an evidence base for a crack cocaine strategy