Two-fifths of the studied substance abusing men had been imprisoned between 1992 and 2005 compared to only 14 percent of the women. Convicted men were more often em-ployed, had a better education and were less often diagnosed with neurotic, stress-related or somatoform disorder than convicted women, and the number of imprisonments was also higher for men than for women. However, the differences between men and women in the group of convicted substance abusers were smaller than in the group of substance abusers without convictions.
Half of the studied substance abusers committed a crime during the 5-year observation period. Two-thirds of the convicted abusers committed at least one crime during the fol-low-up. Property crimes, especially petty thefts, were the most common type of crime re-gardless of the gender or history of prior convictions. Convicted abusers committed crimes more often than other abusers in all of the categories. Overall, men committed crimes more often than women, but there were no differences in the amount of property crimes in the group of convicted substance abusers.
Some explanations for these preliminary findings can be found in the literature. Convicted substance abusing women constitute a very small sub-group. Although most crimes are committed by men, it is a simplification to connect it to masculinity (e.g., Hood-Williams, 2001). The relationship between criminality and gender is more complicated (Steffen-Meier and Allan, 1996). Gender roles tend to restrict women’s occupations and positions (illegal or legal) connected to criminal opportunities and the motivation to take risks.
However, some women achieve these positions. This might explain why differences be-tween genders were narrower amongst convicted substance abusers than other abusers.
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Women are more protected from committing crimes than men (Steffen-Meier and Allan, 1996). However, convicted women have difficulties resisting stigmatizing labels that have been imposed on them (Geiger & Fischer 2005), and as substance abusers with criminal backgrounds, women also fall under the surveillance of officials (Uggen & Skruttschnitt, 1998). Self-identification as a criminal is also connected to drug use and convictions (Alarid & Vega, 2010). There is evidence that labelling can trigger processes that increase involvement in deviant behaviour (Bernburg, Marvin, & Craig, 2006).
In the general population, the gender gap is also narrower in regards to property crimes.
As a type of crime, property crimes have been found typical for women with previous convictions (Deschenes et al. 2007). Steffenmeier (1993) explains the concentration of women’s offenses in minor property crimes as a result of the following: increased oppor-tunities for women to commit this type of crime, increased drug abuse by women, and increased economic marginalization of women.
These results are descriptive and cannot be generalized to other convicted substance abus-ers. As presented in the introduction, there are other confounding factors connected to criminality that should be taken into account before drawing conclusions. In the near fu-ture, this study will be expanded with the use of a Cox regression to analyse the propor-tional risk of committing a crime between 2006 and 2010. A Cox regression will be utilized because deaths and confounding factors can be taken into account. Cox regression models will be created to separately analyse both overall criminality and property crimes specifi-cally.
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