NCJ Number
189615
Date Published
1999
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This paper describes the International Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program.
Abstract
The International Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (I-ADAM) Program was designed by the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, to provide an international research platform to study the relationship between drugs, crime, and other social problems. It is a standardized international drug surveillance system to enable researchers to compare the prevalence of drug use among arrestees in different nations and to assess the consequences of drug abuse within and across national boundaries. Goals and objectives for I-ADAM include providing a data-driven framework for informing and coordinating global drug control policy; advancing the body of knowledge on the relationship between drugs, crime and other social problems; and analyzing existing data and disseminating the results in an appropriate format to a targeted group of researchers and policymakers. The program: (1) addresses the problem of the absence of comparable international drug data; (2) provides a standard basis for nations to coordinate drug control policies and improve multilateral cooperation; (3) can be used to evaluate criminal justice interventions in a cost-effective manner; (4) is a low-cost and efficient system for estimating drug use; and (5) can advance the understanding of the relationship between drugs and crime. The program has played a key role in tracking hardcore drug use, has provided strong evidence that drug use is subject to powerful cohort effects, and has been useful in demonstrating the regional variation of the US drug problem, and in identifying the prevalence of drug use within a hardcore population of youth. References