Sources used in this document:

This source details the relationship between the prescription drugs benzodiazepine and pharmacological opioid use and crime. It gives particular detail to the selling of these drugs on the black market, and is based on information from informants, law enforcement and health practitioners in Australia. This is an excellent source for illustrating how even legalized drugs can contribute to the development of criminal activity. The purpose of this publication was to aid in the understanding and edification for law enforcement officials in this specialized area of illicit drug activity, and was financed by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing as part of its support of the National Drug Strategy. "The purpose of this study was to contribute to the law enforcement sector's understanding of the relationship between benzodiazepine and pharmaceutical opioid use and crime, and the impact of this in three select Australian jurisdictions (Fry, Smith, Bruno, Okeefe, Miller, 2007)."

Klein, A.R. (2009). Practical Implications of Current Domestic Violence Research: For Law Enforcement, Prosecutors and Judges. Retrieved from http://www.nij.gov/nij/topics/crime/intimate-partner-violence/practical-implications-research/ch3/drug-alcohol-abusers.htm

This ePub from the National Institute of Justice focuses on domestic violence and common characteristics of both victims and perpetrators. Of particular interest to the relationship between drugs and crimes can be found in Chapter't 3's description of drug and alcohol abusers and their proclivities to domestic violence. This publication also present information regarding substance abuse as a risk factor as well as findings linking substance abuse and domestic violence to other crimes, for both the abused and their abusers. This publication underpins the relationship between illegal drugs and criminal activity by citing pertinent statistics which can be of use for examples to prove this inherent link between drugs and crime, as the following quotation demonstrates. "…a California study found alcohol or drugs, or both, were involved in 38% of the domestic violence incident arrests (Klein, 2009)." It was written by Andrew R. Klein (the Paul E. Beam Professor of Law at Indiana University's School of Law at Indianapolis) for the purpose of providing research to practitioners regarding the daily activities of domestic violence law enforcement officers, attorneys and judges.