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From Douglas McNabb
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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Oice o Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
December 2010
Pathways to Desistance
How and why do many seriousadolescent oenders stop o
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ending while others continue tocommit crimes? This series o bul
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letins presents ndings rom thePathways to Desistance Study, amultidisciplinary investigation thatattempts to answer this question.
Jeff Slowikowski, Acting Administrator
Substance Use and DelinquentBehavior Among Serious AdolescentOffenders
Edward P. Mulvey, Carol A. Schubert, and Laurie Chassin
Investigators interviewed 1,354 young oenders rom Philadelphiaand Phoenix or 7 years ater theirconvictions to learn what actors(e.g., individual maturation, liechanges, and involvement withthe criminal justice system) lead youth who have committed seriousoenses to persist in or desist romoending. As a result o these interviewsand a review o ocial records,researchers have collected the mostcomprehensive dataset availableabout serious adolescent oendersand their lives in late adolescenceand early adulthood.These data provide an unprece
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dented look at how young peoplemature out o oending and whatthe justice system can do to pro
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mote positive changes in the liveso these youth.
Highlights
The Pathways to Desistance study ollowed more than 1,300 serious juvenileoenders or 7 years ater their conviction. In this bulletin, the authors presentsome key ndings on the link between adolescent substance use and seriousoending:
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Serious/chronic oenders are much more likely than other juvenileoenders to be substance users and to qualiy as having substanceuse disorders. Substance use and oending at one age is a consistent predictor o continued serious oending at a later age.
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Dispositional actors (e.g., sensation seeking, behavioral disinhibition, poor aect regulation, stress, depression) can lead to “externalizing” behaviors such as substance use and criminal activity.
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Substance use and serious oending fuctuate in similar patternsover time, suggesting a reciprocal or sequential relationship, but nocausal relationship has been proven.
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Substance use and serious oending decrease in late adolescence.Understanding the actors that enable youth to desist rom thesebehaviors as they learn new skills and mature may reveal avenuesor intervention.
Ofce o Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
ojjdp.gov
DECEMBER 2010
Substance Use and Delinquent Behavior Among Serious Adolescent Offenders
Edward P. Mulvey, Carol A. Schubert, and Laurie Chassin
Irdi
The nexus between substance use and oending duringadolescence has important implications or juvenile justiceinterventions. Many o the adolescents who get in trouble with the law have problems with substance use, and theiroending is tied to their involvement with drugs or alcohol. Gaining a deeper understanding o the dynamic ebband fow o these behaviors is critical to rening treatmentapproaches and more eectively targeting prevention eorts or adolescent oenders. The right intervention atthe right time in the development o these oenders couldorestall a lietime o substance use and oending that ueleach other in a destructive pattern.Much work has been done on the relationship betweenadolescent substance use and oending, but most studieshave ocused on general community samples or samples o atrisk youth as they begin to engage in these behaviors.These eorts have produced a sizable literature documenting the actors related to the onset or maintenance o these behaviors independently o each other. Less researchhas ocused on the reciprocal eects o these behaviorson each other during adolescence. Also lacking is a clearunderstanding o how these behaviors play out beyond thepoint in early adulthood when youth with established histories o oending and substance use cease one behavioror the other (see Hussong et al., 2004, or an exception).Inormation gathered rom this vantage point, joined withextant research, will contribute to a more complete understanding o the link between substance use and oendingand will enhance the knowledge base available to juvenile justice policymakers and practitioners.One OJJDPsponsored longitudinal study oers a particularly detailed and rich picture o substance use andoending in serious adolescent oenders over time, usingregular interviews conducted over a period o 7 years atercourt involvement. The study,
Pathways to Desistance: A Prospective Study of Serious Adolescent Offenders,
ollows alarge sample o serious (overwhelmingly elony) oendersinto early adulthood, providing insight into changes acrossmultiple lie domains that contribute to oenders’ desisting rom or persisting in antisocial activities (Mulvey etal., 2004) (see “About the Pathways to Desistance Study”on p. 8).
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The Pathways study is important to the juvenile justice eld because serious oenders, such as thoseollowed in this study, drive much o the policy debate in juvenile justice (Greenwood, 2006) and present the system with some o its most vexing practical challenges. Amongits many goals, the study tests whether the relationshipsbetween substance use and oending observed in previousstudies o communitybased youth or youth in detentionalso hold or individuals who have more serious and/orchronic problems. The study also observes the joint desistance process or substance use and oending.This bulletin describes what is known about the relationships between substance use and oending based onextant research and the Pathways data. It is the beginning,rather than the end, o an involved story. Researchershave observed several interesting and relevant relationships between these behaviors in the sample overall and inindividuals during the 2year period ollowing their courtinvolvement. These ndings contribute to a deeper understanding o how substance use and oending interact andaect the desistance process in these adolescents.
Wa D We Kw?
Several general statements seem warranted, given previousresearch on this topic.
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Substance Use Problems and SeriousDelinquency Are Linked
Researchers consistently nd a strong link between substance use problems and serious delinquency, regardlesso how they structure the inquiry.
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Studies o youth in juvenile court demonstrate that amajority o courtinvolved adolescents have recently used illegal substances and that more serious and chronic adolescent oenders have used more substances andare more likely to qualiy or a diagnosis o a substanceuse disorder (Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program, 1999; Huizinga and JakobChien, 1998; Wilsonet al., 2001; Teplin et al., 2002).
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Investigators who study large samples o community youth observe a strong association between reportedserious oending and substance use in these groups(Johnston, O’Malley, and Bachman, 2006; Ford,2005).
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Researchers who ollow adolescent oenders over timend that substance use at one age is one o the mostconsistent indicators o continued serious oendingat a later age (Dembo et al., 1993; Lipsey and Derzon, 1998; Dembo, Wareham, and Schmeidler, 2007;D’Amico et al., 2008; Hussong et al., 2004).The issue o when and how individuals develop thesecooccurring patterns o substance use and illegal activity is less clear. Some o the same actors that put an indi vidual at risk or involvement in criminality also put thatindividual at risk or substance use problems (Hawkins,Catalano, and Miller, 1992; Iacono, Malone, and McGue,2008; Mamorstein, Iacono, and McGue, 2009). Parentalsubstance use disorders, poor parenting, confictual amily environments, and dispositional actors such as sensationseeking and behavioral disinhibition place an adolescent athigher risk o using drugs and alcohol and/or engaging inillegal acts (Hawkins, Catalano, and Miller, 1992).In addition, adolescents with poor aect regulation, highlevels o environmental stress, or depression may usedrugs and alcohol to medicate themselves as a copingmechanism. However, these relations are less consistently ound—especially once “externalizing behaviors” (e.g.,substance use and criminal oending) are considered—and oten appear in complex interactions (Hersh and Hussong, 2009). The relation between negative mood andalcohol use has been reported to be stronger among adolescents with
fewer
conduct problems (Hussong, Gould,and Hersh, 2008).
Substance Use and Oending Fluctuatein Similar Patterns Over Time
It is clear that these two behaviors are associated overtime, although there does not seem to be a clear progression rom one to the other. Several investigators reportevidence that behavior problems and aggression at a younger age predict later adolescent illicit substance use(Henry, Tolan, and GormanSmith, 2001; Kellam et al.,1983; Mason, Hitchings, and Spoth, 2007; Wiesner, Kim,and Capaldi, 2005), escalations in use over time (Hussongand Chassin, 1998), and later diagnoses o substance abuseand dependence (Chassin et al., 1999; Disney et al., 1999).In addition, studies suggest that early substance use predicts subsequent criminal behavior in adolescents (Huizinga, Loeber, and Thornberry, 1995; Bui, Ellickson, andBell, 2000; Ford, 2005; French et al., 2000; Loeber andFarrington, 2000).Recent advances in statistical methods (e.g., joint trajectory analyses) have produced other insights into thistemporal relationship. Joint trajectory analyses allow theresearcher to examine the comparability o the patterns o these two behaviors as they progress over the same timeperiod (Nagin, 2005). Research using this technique hasdemonstrated that criminal behavior and substance useollow parallel courses over time (Sullivan and Hamilton,2007), suggesting a reciprocal relationship between thetwo behaviors. Whether the relationship is sequential orreciprocal can be debated; it may be that the relationshipollows dierent patterns in dierent groups o youth. It isclear, however, that delinquent behavior and substance useproblems go hand in hand in adolescence.
Multiple Mechanisms May Link theBehaviors
Substance use and delinquency can interrelate in several ways over the course o adolescence to promote dual in volvement and set the stage or a dicult entry into youngadulthood.Substance use in and o itsel is certainly not the primary cause o involvement in illegal activity. Substance use,however, may initiate or heighten the risk o oendingeither independently or in conjunction with other risk actors. There are several ideas about the ways that substanceuse might exert this eect, as illustrated in gure 1.Substance use and oending might have a simple reciprocal relationship. “Being high” can lower inhibitions againstinvolvement in criminal acts (a psychopharmacologicalexplanation), and/or committing crime might be a way to obtain unds to support substance use (an instrumentalexplanation) (White et al., 2002; Goldstein, 1985). According to this ormulation, one behavior indicates thatthe other behavior is more likely to occur.
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MULVEY ET AL Substance Use and Delinquent Behavior Among Serious Adolescent Offenders
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