Abstract
Globally, drug use and its attendant problems have caught the attention of policymakers. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among male prisoners in three major prisons in Ghana. A sample of 253 prisoners (Mage = 31.26) responded to the self-administered questionnaire. A binary logistic regression showed that age was significantly associated with the use of marijuana and other drugs within the past year and past 30 days. Convicted robbers were about twice more likely to have ever used any other drug within the past 30 days compared with those who were not. Besides, convicted robbers were about twice more likely to have ever used marijuana within the past 30 days than those who were not convicted of robbery. Moreover, prisoners who were re-offenders-robbery were about four times more likely to have ever used marijuana within the past 30 days and six times more likely to have used any other drug within the past year than those who were not re-offenders-robbery. Furthermore, prisoners who had ever suffered childhood abuse were about three times more likely to have used marijuana within the past year and four times more likely to have used marijuana within the past 30 days than their counterparts.
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Acknowledgments
The authors express their gratitude to the Ghana Prisons Service and all the prisoners who took part in the study. Commanders of the Takoradi, Kumasi and Nsawam medium security prisons including Supt Constance Dokumah (Takoradi prisons) and Supt Robert Kavi (Nsawam prisons) are hereby acknowledged.
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Parimah, F., Owusu, J.O., Appiah-Honny, S.A. (2021). A Study of Drug Use and Socio-Demographic Characteristics of Male Prisoners in Ghana. In: Chan, H.C.(., Adjorlolo, S. (eds) Crime, Mental Health and the Criminal Justice System in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71024-8_13
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