Convicts serving jail time and misuse of psychoactive substances

Abstract

The subject of this research is the existence and nature of the relationship, and the difference, between convicted persons who are misusing psychoactive supstances and convicted persons who are not misusing psychoactive substances, in terms of their socio-demographic and criminal-penologycal characteristics. The reason that this research has been done is due to the hypothetical assumption that persons who are serving jail time are, in a number of cases, misusing psychoactive substances in the period before serving their sentence, continue to misuse, or were committing criminal misdemeanours in terms of production and putting into circulation narcotics, in much larger numbers than persons who are not misusing psychoactive susptances, and by rule are recidivists. Conducting a poll, the authors have gathered information about the misuse of psychoactive substances among convicts who are serving sentences in Novi Pazar County Jail, and using the statistic method the authors have edited, analized, and interpreted the information obtained by the poll, in the goal of confirming or dismissing the research hypothesis.

Keywords

• psychoactive substances (pas)
• socio-demographic characteristics
• criminal-penological characteristics
• convict
• sentence serving
• criminal misdemeanours