the addict-as-burglar sociology — "One reason why the home of…"

The book opens Gately's arc with a small sociology of the disease as economics: violence costs energy the addict would rather spend on what the crime buys, so the addiction routes him into burglary specifically, and the residue it leaves in a stranger's home — the sense of being violated and unclean — is literally the addict's own condition tracked in on his shoes. Character and crime are both downstream of the need.