The Drug–Crime Connection in Adolescent and Adult Respondents

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine whether the nature of the drug–crime relationship differs as a function of participant age (adolescent vs. adult). It was hypothesized that the Drug × Crime interaction would predict subsequent drug use and serious offending in 924 early- to mid-adolescents but not in 722 adults. All participants came from the Offending, Crime, and Justice Survey conducted in England and Wales between 2003 and 2006. The hypothesis was supported by the results of two separate two-equation multivariate linear regression analyses. These findings indicate that the relationship between drug use and criminal offending varies as a function of participant age, such that the relationship is interactive during its formative years but becomes cumulative or additive during early adulthood. The research, theoretical, and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Does the Worst of Both Worlds Effect Run Through Cognition? Testing Perceived Peer Delinquency/Drug Use and Moral Neutralization as Mediating Mechanisms

“…Prior research supports the construct and predictive validity of the WBW index (Walters, 2014a;2016a, 2017. In the Walters (2017) investigation, it was determined that drugs and crime interacted to form the WBW, at least during early to mid-adolescence.…”

“…In testing the "worst of both worlds" (WBW) hypothesis, Walters (2017) discovered that the effect of drug use and crime on future behavior was interactive during its formative stages (adolescence) but appeared to become exclusively additive during adulthood. It has also been noted that the WBW effect registers even when developmental antecedents to drug use and crime (alcohol experimentation and school bullying, respectively) are used to create the comorbidity variable so that drug use and criminality need not be of lifestyle proportions to produce a WBW effect (Walters, 2022).…”

“…Kenny's (2013) "failsafe ef" procedure, (r my.x ) × (sd m.x ) × (sd y.x )/(sd m ) × (sd y ) was used to rule out omitted variable bias, and the regression was recomputed without precursor measures to rule out endogenous selection bias (Elwert & Winship, 2014). Descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations, and multicollinearity were computed with SPSS Version 26 (IBM, 2019) and the path analysis was performed with MPlus 8.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017.…”

“…The main hypothesis for this study held that two separate pairs of mediators, one with perceived peer delinquency as the first-stage mediator and moral neutralization as the second-stage mediator, and the other with perceived peer drug use as the first-stage mediator and moral neutralization as the second-stage mediator, would mediate the relationship between early adolescent drug-crime comorbidity and mid-to late-adolescent delinquency. A second, more exploratory, hypothesis predicted that the individual paths from the peer delinquency x peer drug use interaction to moral neutralization and from peer delinquency x peer drug use to mid-adolescent delinquency would also be significant based on prior research showing that the drug and crime components of the WBW can have an interactive effect on future adolescent delinquent behavior (Walters, 2017).…”

Highs and Lows: An Interrupted Time-Series Evaluation of the Impact of North America’s Only Supervised Injection Facility on Crime

“…The lack of research on supervised injection facilities’ impact on crime is somewhat surprising given that some scholars claim the drug–crime relationship to be a “brute fact” (Walters, 2017, p. 205). A recent meta-analysis indicated that users of drugs were 2.8 to 3.8 times more likely to commit a crime (Bennett, Holloway, & Farrington, 2008).…”