Juvenile Substance Abuse and Criminal Career Continuity

• Main Author: Langsam, Adam H.
• Other Authors: Pillai, Vijayan
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: University of North Texas 2000
• Subjects: Teenagers > Substance use > United States.; Juvenile delinquency > United States.; Recidivism > United States.; juvenile drug abuse; deterrence model; recidivism
• Online Access: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2631/

The issue of juvenile drug abuse and criminal career continuity has become a nationwide concern in the last 3 decades. Social scientists and policymakers alike are concerned with the plausible relationship between juvenile drug abuse and adult crimes of high seriousness. This study represents an effort to examine the connection between juvenile drug abuse and criminal career continuity. This study has been conducted to examine the life course of the individual. The data came from Lyle Shannon's longitudinal study of the relationship between juvenile delinquency and adult crime in three birth cohorts from the city of Racine, Wisconsin The traditional social control approach toward reducing the likelihood of criminal career continuity is deterrence. The deterrence model asserts that people engage in certain kinds of behavior only after rational calculation of the costs versus the benefits. People who obey the law strive for the rewards of conformity and try to avoid the costs of criminal behavior. The threat of punishment increases the potential costs of breaking the law. Punishment is one sanction inducing such compliance. It must be realized, however, that deterrence does not have a linear effect across all types of offenders. The degree of deterrent effect on future criminal activity is often mitigated by the circumstances unique to an individual. The offender who is involved with drug abuse and the lifestyle that surrounds it best exemplifies this situation. This way of life diminishes the effectiveness of official deterrence techniques to an extent, because drug abuse is a biopsychosocial problem. In this study, the researcher pursued a number of concerns dealing with the question of whether juveniles who are delinquents and drug users are more likely to commit crimes as adults. The focus was on the juvenile recidivist and the juvenile drug user. The results indicate that those juveniles having a contact with the police are more likely to have a criminal career than are those who do not. Furthermore, those juveniles having a police contact for drugs are far more likely to commit crimes of high seriousness in adulthood than are those juveniles having police contact for non-drug crimes. In an analysis of sanctions, the results support the hypothesis that those juveniles receiving a sanction are less likely to commit a crime of high seriousness in adulthood than those who received no sanction. In addition, the empirical findings support the hypothesis that those juveniles receiving a sanction for a drug crime are more likely to commit an adult crime of high seriousness than are those juveniles who received a non-drug sanction. This result is likely due to the biopsycosocial nature of drug abuse. The results do not support the hypothesis that juvenile drug distributors are more likely to commit a crime of high seriousness in adulthood than are consumers. Also, the results suggest that there is no support for the hypothesis that juveniles who used hard drugs are more likely to commit adult crimes of high seriousness than are those who used marijuana only. These results suggest that once a juvenile is in the drug web, he/she becomes an active participant in a network of criminal activity.