Droga e reato: uno studio fenomenologico-ermeneutico su detenuti tossicodipendenti

[Autom. eng. transl.] The relationship between drug addiction and crime has been explored in numerous studies, many of which conceptualize this relationship in terms of linear causality. More recent, qualitatively oriented researches have instead highlighted the complexity of this relationship, with a specific focus on the different life paths (pathways). This work is inspired by this work, aimed at studying the experience of drugs and crime on a sample of 25 drug-addicted prisoners, aged between 26 and 68, interviewed in prison. The semi-structured interviews were specially prepared with a narrative approach, that is to say encouraging the participants to tell their own story with particular reference to drug use and crime. The theoretical and methodological frame of reference is the phenomenological-hermeneutical one and the textual analysis of the transcripts of the interviews was carried out according to the method described by Lindseth and Norberg (2004). These analyzes have allowed to identify some thematic nucleuses characterizing the life stories of the interviewees: a difficult childhood in multi-problematic families and in deviant social contexts; a first occasional use of substances in the recreational field (for example in discos), favoring ecstasy or cocaine as drugs of choice; the pleasure caused by taking the substance as a powerful incentive to switch from occasional use to regular use. Three pathways characterizing the passage from abuse (regular use) to addiction: "narcissistic" (uncontrolled use of cocaine to feel powerful and limitless), "post-traumatic" (dramatic increase in the use of substances following of a trauma, with a self-destructive purpose) and "anesthetic" (poliabuse of substances to alleviate physical and psychological pain). The second and third pathways were more associated with the need to commit crimes to "support" drug addiction economically. The three pathways are finally interpreted in the light of some psychoneurobiological conceptualizations validated in the literature (Salvini and Faccio, 2002).