The Relationship between Delinquency and Drug Use

A study done in 1996 on prisoners of the Arizona Department of Corrections, followed inmates for the first 3 years of their incarceration. This study found that “inmates with no gang affiliation were significantly less likely that those wit either street gang affiliation or prison gang affiliation to have been guilty of a violent misconduct” (Griffin, 2006). Also noted in the Griffon study, inmates who have a gang affiliation are less likely to participate in needed rehab and vocational programs that may help them upon release. A big problem with prison gangs is that very little is known about them, this is because they are very secretive, unlike their counterparts on the streets (Fong, 1991). The reason for this secrecy is so gang members can avoid being persecuted by the prison administration.

In a study that was done back in 1970 by Sutherland and Cressey, they pointed out that in the U.S. alone, “felons are overrepresented in the addict population, [and] crime rates are increased considerably by drug addiction” (1970, p. 164). Despite having proposed several hypotheses attempting to explain the correlation between drug abuse and crime, they could not reach a conclusion. A decade later, the knowledge about the drug/crime relationship had steadily increased due to numerous studies of the incarcerated or addicted population. However, the information didn’t reveal any viewpoints that made sense aside from heroin. This view was

One of the most common beliefs today is that the drug-crime link is viewed as causal. More notably, it is presumed that drug use is one of the key motives of crime. However, criminological proof to support this belief is not as resilient as many have might imagined. Rather, the best obtainable investigation has commonly decided that the relationship is exceedingly complex and challenges attempts to sort out directionality.

In her article “The Drugs Relationship: Exploring Dynamic and Static Models,” Lesley Williams Reid examines the relationship between drugs and crime by looking at offenders’ environment. For example she surveyed 835 men in four different cities, which lead her to make her own theories which was that criminals had committed their first crime at an early age and drug users also started at an early age (Reid, 2001). The weakness in Reid article is that she based her research on male inmates in maximum security. This is a weakness because she is only focusing on one gender and one small population.

Another major subset in the overall prison population in the U.S. is the growing rise in incarceration rates of drug offenders. Professor Blumstein notes that when considering the growth of incarceration rates by specific type of crime, such as murder, robbery, assault, burglary, drugs, and sex offenses during the two decades from 1980 to 2001, the single most important result was that the prison rate for drug offenders increased by a factor of 10; moreover, these drug offenders currently account for the largest percentage of both state and federal prison populations (Blumstein, 2011).

the statement that delinquents can be a complex book filled with various challenges that arise within it is a well stated statement. However while looking at the development of these delinquent use is hard to say that regardless on how complex their behaviors may be it is easy to find out how said behaviors were created in the first place by finding the societal pressures and institutions that they have developed these behaviors in our their home and school situation give or take if they stay in both the situations you can add community as the other institutions that develop these behaviors. Now with the social bond theory you can develop an understanding of how the society itself develops these complex delinquent use society creates delinquents

From the above definition, differential association theory can be concluded as criminal behavior that is learned in interaction with others (Bartol & Bartol, 2005). In fact, it is one of the oldest and best known social learning theories of juvenile delinquency because of how impressionable juveniles are. This theory applies to detaining juveniles and the detention center environment. Detention centers take youth away from their community and "comfort zone peers" and place them in an environment with other youth who partake in deviant behavior. (Parritz & Troy, 2013). In fact, juvenile detained in these facilities may actually increase their likelihood of re-offending because it is an environment in which juveniles can pick up criminal lifestyles,

Although non-gang members may also participate in risky activities like binge drinking, marijuana use, and drug selling, gang affiliation greatly increases exposure and likelihood to partake in these activities. Studies show that “early alcohol use and early marijuana use are both identified risk factors for joining a gang among adolescents” (Swahn et. al 354). Youth gang members are also exposed to hard drugs because of gang involvement in the illegal drug market. Many youth gang members in these

The data included the inmates personal information (address, birthplace, nicknames, ect,), and criminal records. The data was also limited to inmates who were incarcerated in May 2004 and May 2006, serving three conservative years in a traditional facility, and who were not sentenced to life without the possibility of parole or sentenced to death (Worrall & Morris. 2012). There results shown that gang membership is an important

Over the years, I think there has been misconception that drug use is the common cause for crime, as we are lead to believe that drug are bad and that they turned people into crazy criminals. While it might be true to some extents, I think the relationship between drug use and crime is rather complex and dynamic. As a community, we tend to blame drugs for every problem in our society, but the reality is that there are other important factors that we need to take into account, including unemployment, socio economic inequality and poor mental health before we could say that drug use really caused crime. As pointed out in The Sociology of American Drug Use, research provides ‘’no conclusive evidence about any single relationship between drug use

This week’s article, “Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency”; the following research was created to improve the understanding of criminal behavior, violence, and drug use by looking at how youths develops within the framework of their environment such as family, school, friends, and their community. Each longitudinal study involved self-report surveys on a certain group of youths in high risk neighborhoods that were examined over six month intervals within three and a half years, using the same measurement for each study (Lozada 2016).

In addressing the problem proposed, “Does drug use encourage criminal behavior?” The observation date used to collect data to address this question is a questionnaire and self-report measure. However, for these measures to be scientifically valid they should process both reliability and validity. The reliability of the question presented, “is does it measure what it supposed to measure.” Reliability is the extents to which when measuring these procedures will they yield the same result on a repeated trial. For example, the question asked, “Have you used drugs, and the answer is “yes” then each time the question is asked your answer should be “yes.” If it were unreliable, the answer to the question

Hypothesis III, drug use and crime share common causes, conveys the strongest explanation correlating both drug use and criminal behavior. Based on research, Levinthal (2012) suggests the link of drug use and crime are indirectly related due to interactional circumstances. Evidence affirms, crime rates are higher in communities of poor social status, where drug use is likely to occur (Levinthal, 2012). However, circumstances can fluctuate, depending on the individual’s circumstance, environment, and economic status. Reiss and Roth’s 1993 study (as cited in Gorman & White, 2000) confirms, based on the National Research Council, the risk factors of childhood violence were the same for teenage drug use, as well as, adult alcohol and drug problems.

A lot of people link drug abuse with crime, at times even with violent crime. This association comes from psychopharmacological association that imply that people may engage in criminal acts after taking some kind of substance known to undermine their judgment as well as self-control result in paranoid thoughts and distortion of inhibitions (Sewell, Poling and Sofuoglu, 189). Though all substances that affect the central nervous system might result in this kind of relationships, scientific information indicates that some type of drugs have a more strong effect than others. Such drugs are alcohol, cocaine, phencyclidine and amphetamines (McCauley, Ruggiero, Resnick and Kilpatrick, 136). Inversely, cannabis and heroin are less associated with desire to commit

According to the authors of this article, it is said that substance use and crime are connected. Substance use and crime may affect each other together by continuing on or by getting worse over time. There are shortcomings to these studies that may affect the conclusion and implications of these studies. The objective of this study, which the authors addressed the methodological problems resulting from the way that these reciprocal processes are typically modeled. They addressed the influence of context on the association between substance use and crime. Despite the well-recognized connection between social risk, such as deviant peer affiliation, with delinquency, crime and substance use (Fergusson et al, 2002; Van Rydin and Dishion, 2014), these social contexts have been largely absent from the