“This study has given an intriguing glance into a world in need of urgent attention: the world of the drug motivated criminal. It has shown that this is not one world, but many worlds: sex workers trading their
attentions for rocks, Cape gangsters warring over a prime retail street corner, wife beaters gearing up on booze or other drugs, white kids from the suburbs peddling stolen cell phones for a fix in the inner city.
But this research has barely scratched the surface of this complicated and often contradictory underground. The central limitation of a study of this sort is that the causal links between drugs and crime cannot be adequately probed. The interview component was conducted by non-specialists in an accusatory environment, resulting in startling levels of prevarication among the subjects of the research. This leaves high levels of certainty about the presence of drugs, but little guidance about what can be made of this fact.”
