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\\server05\productn\C\CRY\45-1\CRY101.txt unknown Seq: 1 9-FEB-07 16:46 DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES RYAN D. SCHROEDER Department of Sociology University of Louisville PEGGY C. GIORDANO STEPHEN A. CERNKOVICH Department of Sociology Bowling Green State University KEYWORDS: drugs, desistance, life-course theory, adult crime Sampson and Laub’s age-graded theory of informal social control emphasizes the importance of adult social bonds such as marriage and stable employment in redirecting behavior in a more prosocial direc- tion. Heavy alcohol use has also been shown to influence persistent patterns of offending as well as more episodic offending across the life course. Sampson and Laub’s life-course theory emphasizes the negative impact of alcohol use on marital and employment bonds. Although alcohol has indeed been shown to have significant effects on criminal offending, we argue that drug use and the drug culture in which many contemporary offenders are enmeshed have consequences that often complicate desistance processes in ways that alcohol does not. Drug use and its lifestyle concomitants bring together a host of distinctive social dynamics that compromise multiple life domains. The current project investigates the role of drug use on desistance processes relying on a contemporary sample of previously institutionalized youth. We draw on three waves of data from the Ohio life-course study, a project that spans some 21 years. The results support the assertion that drug use exerts unique effects on desistance processes, once levels of alcohol use are taken into account. We investigate possible mechanisms that help to explain the differential impact of drug use on offending and find that social network effects, particularly partner criminality, explain some but not all of the negative impact of drug use on life-course patterns of criminal offending. Research on long-term patterns of involvement in crime often centers on the debate between researchers who posit life-long criminal propensi- ties to engage in crime (the idea of “stable traits”) and those who argue CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 45 NUMBER 1 2007 191

DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES

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DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES

RYAN D. SCHROEDERDepartment of SociologyUniversity of Louisville

PEGGY C. GIORDANOSTEPHEN A. CERNKOVICH

Department of SociologyBowling Green State University

KEYWORDS: drugs, desistance, life-course theory, adult crime

Sampson and Laub’s age-graded theory of informal social controlemphasizes the importance of adult social bonds such as marriage andstable employment in redirecting behavior in a more prosocial direc-tion. Heavy alcohol use has also been shown to influence persistentpatterns of offending as well as more episodic offending across the lifecourse. Sampson and Laub’s life-course theory emphasizes the negativeimpact of alcohol use on marital and employment bonds. Althoughalcohol has indeed been shown to have significant effects on criminaloffending, we argue that drug use and the drug culture in which manycontemporary offenders are enmeshed have consequences that oftencomplicate desistance processes in ways that alcohol does not. Drug useand its lifestyle concomitants bring together a host of distinctive socialdynamics that compromise multiple life domains. The current projectinvestigates the role of drug use on desistance processes relying on acontemporary sample of previously institutionalized youth. We drawon three waves of data from the Ohio life-course study, a project thatspans some 21 years. The results support the assertion that drug useexerts unique effects on desistance processes, once levels of alcohol useare taken into account. We investigate possible mechanisms that help toexplain the differential impact of drug use on offending and find thatsocial network effects, particularly partner criminality, explain somebut not all of the negative impact of drug use on life-course patterns ofcriminal offending.

Research on long-term patterns of involvement in crime often centerson the debate between researchers who posit life-long criminal propensi-ties to engage in crime (the idea of “stable traits”) and those who argue

CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 45 NUMBER 1 2007 191

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that adult life events can significantly alter these criminal pathways (Gottf-redson and Hirschi, 1990; Laub and Sampson, 2003; Moffitt, 1997; Naginand Paternoster, 2000; Sampson and Laub, 1993). Sampson and Laub’sage-graded theory of informal social control in particular has emphasizedthe importance of social bonds such as marriage and a stable job as offer-ing the potential to redirect lives in a more prosocial direction. Anothertradition within criminology emphasizes the intimate connections betweendrugs and crime (Anglin and Speckart, 1988; Chaiken and Chaiken, 1990;Dawkins, 1997; Elliott, Huizinga, and Menard, 1989; Inciardi and Pot-tieger, 1991; National Institute of Justice, 2001; White et al., 1999).Research in the latter tradition has often concentrated on initial onsetprocesses (e.g., which behavior pattern emerges earliest?) and/or investi-gated situational connections (e.g., how much criminal activity involves theneed for money to supply a drug habit?), but researchers have less ofteninvestigated the role of drug use in life-course patterns of criminalbehavior.

The current study contributes to research on life-course offendingprocesses by explicitly examining the impact of drug use on criminalbehavior over a longer span of time and by introducing social networkmeasures as potential mediators. We rely on three waves of structuredinterview data derived from a sample of youths originally incarcerated ininstitutions for delinquent youth (1985) and subsequently reinterviewed asadults (1995, 2003) when the respondents averaged 29 and then 38 years ofage. We assess and compare the influence of drug and alcohol use on thelikelihood of exhibiting a pattern of stable desistance, stable persistence,or an unstable/episodic pattern of criminal involvement, net of other tradi-tional predictors of desistance.

BACKGROUND

Sampson and Laub have developed a body of evidence that suggeststhat patterns of criminal offending across the life course are not the resultof a stable underlying trait (Bushway, Brame, and Paternoster, 1999; Mof-fitt, 1993, 1997), but they are influenced by life events that increase levelsof informal social control (Laub and Sampson, 2003; Laub, Nagin, andSampson, 1998; Sampson and Laub, 1993, 1997). Sampson and Laub arguethat individual offenders have the potential to change their behavior in amore prosocial direction and point to the importance of the stability and inturn social bonding potential of stable marriages and good jobs as influ-ences on behavioral change.

Laub and Sampson’s (2003) recent work also addresses the influence ofalcohol on life-course patterns of offending and shows that alcohol use

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contributes to a sustained pattern of offending as well as to the more epi-sodic “zigzag” offending pattern found within the sample of Glueck men.Consistent with their age-graded theory of informal social control, Lauband Sampson’s (2003) discussion of mechanisms that link substance use topersistence in criminal offending emphasized the detrimental impact ofalcohol use on the likelihood and stability of marriage and employment.Although the authors recognize that drug use is also connected to sus-tained criminality, Laub and Sampson (2003: 284) discount the differencesbetween alcohol and illicit drugs as producing distinct effects on life-course offending patterns: “The Glueck men do not have to have usedcrack cocaine in order to be relevant to current criminological thinking.”We agree that alcohol is often intimately connected to patterns of criminalinvolvement (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph, 2002; Laub and Samp-son, 2003; Maruna, 2001; Rutter, Giller, and Hagell, 1998; Shover, 1996),but in this study, we hypothesize that drug use and its lifestyle concomi-tants bring together a host of distinctive social dynamics that uniquelycomplicate desistance processes.

DRUG–CRIME CONNECTIONS

A large body of criminological research has examined the relationshipbetween illicit substance use and crime. Both alcohol and drug use havebeen linked to crime and criminality (Dawkins, 1997), but drug users showa particularly extensive amount of serious and violent criminal activity(Inciardi, 1979; Nurco, Hanlon, and Balter, 1991; Speckart and Anglin,1986). Prior research has further implicated drug use as a key componentof continuity in juvenile delinquency (Anglin and Speckart, 1988; Chaikenand Chaiken, 1990; Dawkins, 1997; Elliott, Huizinga, and Menard, 1989;Inciardi and Pottieger, 1991; White et al., 1999). These analyses, however,do not shed much light on the long-term impact of drug use on criminalbehavior. Yet these studies document that drug use and criminality arepositively related, and the magnitude of the drug–crime connection makesit difficult to ignore in life-course investigations of criminality.

Goldstein’s (1985) tripartite framework provides a comprehensive illus-tration of the characteristics that differentiate the effects of drugs fromalcohol on life-course behavioral patterns. Research has corroborated theveracity of the tripartite model in explaining the relationship between druguse and crime (Akers, 1992; Cohen and Felson, 1979; Goode, 1997; Officeof National Drug Control Policy, 2001; Uggen and Thompson, 2003). How-ever, our position is that the impact of drug use on long-term patterns ofcrime extends beyond psychopharmacological effects, situational contexts,or economic pressures created through drug use. In the current study, weexamine ways in which drug use negatively influences not only adult socialbonds but also social network affiliations, and we argue that connections

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to social network processes add to knowledge about the long-term impactof drug use on criminal behavior. The longer window of assessment with asample of serious offenders used in our current study contributes to priorlongitudinal assessments of the impact of drug and alcohol use on criminalbehavior.

THE UNIQUE COMPLICATIONS OF DRUG USE

Alcohol is clearly associated with criminal activity (Huang et al., 2001;Smith and Parker, 1980; White and Hansell, 1996), and giving up alcohol isa salient factor associated with desisting from crime (Laub and Sampson,2003). Nevertheless, our view is that drugs and the drug culture haveunique features that can potentially complicate desistance efforts in waysthat alcohol does not. Beyond the social control explanation for the rela-tionship between drugs and life-course patterns of offending described byLaub and Sampson (2003), it is also important to examine the character ofnetwork affiliations as a mediator of the drug–crime relationship as itoperates over the life course.

SOCIAL BONDS

Although Laub and Sampson (2003) recognize the complications ofmany alcohol-related social processes, the authors emphasize the detri-mental impact that heavy alcohol use has on marital and employmentattachments. Prior work has indeed shown that alcohol has clear detrimen-tal effects on the establishment and maintenance of quality marital rela-tionships (Amato and Previti, 2003; Kitson, 1992; White, Aidala, andZablocki, 1988) and employment histories (Berger and Leigh, 1988;French and Zarkin, 1995; Mijares, 1997). Prior research, however, has alsosuggested that drug use exerts unique and independent influences onsocial bonds. The use of marijuana, for instance, is associated with thepostponement of marriage and parenthood and shorter marital duration,and it increases the likelihood of marital dissolution (Bachman, O’Malley,and Johnston, 1984; Clayton and Voss, 1977; Kaestner, 1997; Kandel andLogan, 1984; Kandel, Simcha-Fagan, and Davies, 1986; Yamaguchi andKandel, 1985). Additionally, illicit drug use is incompatible with theresponsibilities associated with conventional social roles such as a spouse,parent, or worker (Jessor, Donovan, and Costa, 1991; Yamaguchi andKandel, 1985) and is associated with anti-conforming values that conflictwith assuming the conventional roles of adulthood (Kandel and Logan,1984). In contrast, alcohol use, at least in moderation, is a normativebehavior and consistent with adult social roles for most Americans (Gus-field, 1991).

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Mijares (1997) has further suggested that drug use significantly influ-ences labor market instability. Research has indicated that drug use isassociated with a reduction in the number of hours worked per week(Kaestner, 1993), employment gaps (Kandel and Davies, 1990), absencesfrom work (Zarkin et al., 1998), and delay in entering the workforce(Johnson and Herring, 1989). Mijares (1997) reports that drug use (mari-juana, cocaine, and/or heroin) alone or in combination with alcohol use,causes labor market instability, measured by the frequency of quits anddischarges from employment. Alcohol use alone, in contrast, actually low-ers the number of quits and discharges from work.

The use of illicit drugs, therefore, seems to interfere with the develop-ment and maintenance of adult social bonds to a greater degree than doesalcohol use. Although social bonds have been implicated in fostering andsustaining desistance processes, little research has investigated the differ-ential impact of alcohol and drug use on adult social bonds in life-courseassessments of criminality. We hypothesize in our current study that drugswill exert a stronger effect on offending across the life course than willalcohol through the differential influence of drug use on the developmentand maintenance of adult social bonds. It is our view, however, that thecommitment to informal social control as an explanatory factor for life-course patterns of criminal behavior is itself incomplete. Rather, we arguethat it is also important to examine connections to the character of socialnetworks, more broadly defined, as a potential explanatory mechanism inthe long-term relationship between drug use and crime.

SOCIAL NETWORKS

The social circumstances and network associations that surround druguse are of key importance to an understanding of criminal behavior acrossthe life course, as these social connections, although not fixed or unchang-ing, can fundamentally complicate desistance efforts. Laub and Sampson(2003) indicate that individuals who are unattached to social institutionsand free from informal social control have routine activities that are differ-ent from conventional individuals, which results in increased contactbetween similarly situated unattached individuals. Taking a slightly differ-ent approach, Giordano, Cernkovich, and Holland (2003) show that devi-ant peer network contacts and romantic partner criminality are associatedwith high levels of adult criminal behavior, but the long-term impact ofsuch social network characteristics has yet to be explored. Our view is thatillicit drug use is pervasive in its influence on social network associations,which in turn will have a stronger long-term impact on desistance efforts.

Heavy alcohol use clearly has the potential to isolate individuals fromconventional network contacts (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph,2002; Laub and Sampson, 2003), but illicit drug use is potentially much

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more limiting in these respects. The drug culture is to a much greaterdegree a “life” than is alcohol use, as drugs are primarily consumed ingroups (Warr, 1993, 2002), drug use is associated with embeddedness incriminal subcultures (Hagedorn, 1994), and network contacts are neces-sary to secure access to drugs (Adler, 1993). Network associates have beenshown to be an essential element in the process of becoming a regularmarijuana (Becker, 1973) or heroin (Stephens, 1991) user, as these associ-ates provide the help, encouragement, and support for such drug users.

Drug use is characterized by marginalizing effects that may prove to bea salient factor in sustained criminal activity across the life course.Coumans and Spreen (2003) explain that during the process of marginal-ization, drug users gradually develop homogeneous social networks domi-nated by contacts with other drug users. Drug use is furthermoreassociated with embeddedness in criminal subcultures (Becker, 1963;Hagedorn, 1994), as addiction to such substances requires access to thedrug, a process that involves maintaining close relationships with criminalassociates and organizations. Through these network affiliations, drugusers gain “criminal capital” (Padilla, 1992; Sullivan, 1989), and this con-siderable investment in the deviant peer culture in turn restricts access toconventional institutions and activities. The marginalization process makesit more difficult for drug users to launch their own moves toward a moreconventional lifestyle, even if they increasingly develop a general inclina-tion to do so.

Previous research has clearly identified deviant peers as a salient con-tributor to criminal offending (Matsueda and Heimer, 1997; Thornberryand Krohn, 1997; Warr, 2002) and has established a reciprocal relationshipbetween the drug use patterns of peers and individual drug use (Krohn etal., 1996; Matsueda and Anderson, 1998). Most research on the role ofcriminal peers, however, has been limited to adolescent samples and verylittle is known about the importance of peers on adult crime. Morerecently, Giordano, Cernkovich, and Holland (2003) pointed to the influ-ence of romantic partner criminality as well as to peer criminal involve-ment on adult criminal behavior, independent of the presence of a strongmarital bond or the stability of employment circumstances. As Simons etal. (2002) report, delinquent adolescents often find deviant romantic part-ners as adults [e.g., the process of assortative mating (Collins, 1988)] andconclude that criminal romantic partners contribute to stable criminaloffending, irrespective of relationship quality. More recent research high-lights that romantic partners’ delinquency during the adolescent timeperiod shows a unique significant influence on delinquent behavior, net offriends’ delinquency (Haynie et al., 2005). As individuals mature and the

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influence of the family of origin and peer associations diminish, the nor-mative orientation of romantic partners should be a particularly salientfactor influencing criminal stability or change throughout adulthood.

Drug users, especially chronic drug users and addicts, are involved incriminal networks and associate with deviant others on a regular basis, andmaintaining these associations is not conducive to ending a life of crime. Inthis study, then, we examine not only the quality of bonds associated withdrug and alcohol use but also the long-term effects of drugs and alcohol onpartner and peer involvement in deviant/criminal behavior and on life-course patterns of criminal behavior. Beyond the detrimental effect ofdrug use on adult social bonds, we hypothesize that drug use will show astronger impact on life-course patterns of offending than alcohol usethrough the intermediate process of developing and sustaining deviantsocial network affiliations.

THE CURRENT STUDY

DATA

The data used in this analysis of desistance are drawn from the Ohiolife-course study (for a detailed description of the study, see Giordano,Cernkovich, and Rudolph, 2002). The Ohio life-course study (OLS) is athree-wave panel study of adolescents originally surveyed in 1982 whenthey resided in state-level juvenile correctional institutions. These respon-dents were subsequently followed up and reinterviewed in 1995 and againin 2003. The sample includes the entire population of the only state-levelinstitution for females in Ohio (N = 127) and a randomly selected sampleof males from three state-level institutions in Ohio (N = 127). The firstwave of the study, therefore, included 254 institutionalized adolescents,half of which were male and half of which were female. The ages of therespondents in the first wave of the study ranged from 12 to 21 years, witha mean value of 16.34. The first wave sample was 37.5 percent AfricanAmerican and 62.5 percent white.

The first follow-up study of the original juvenile offenders conducted in1995 included 210 subjects. As noted in prior work, due to the long timeperiod between waves of the study (13 years) and the highly marginal lifes-tyles of the majority of the sample members, many respondents were diffi-cult to locate for the follow-up study. Nevertheless, an intensive effort wasmade to locate as many of these adolescents as possible, and 83 percentwere eventually located and interviewed for the follow-up study. The sec-ond follow-up study of the original institutionalized sample of adolescentsconducted in 2003 included 152 of the 210 (72.4 percent) subjects from the1995 sample. Between the first and the second follow-up study, the sampleattrition rate was 17.3 percent, and the overall sample attrition rate from

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1982 is 40.2 percent.1 The third wave of the Ohio life-course study includes75 males (50.7 percent) and 77 females (49.3 percent) and is 39.5 percentminority.

The subjects in the third wave of the study range in age from 35 to 41years, with a mean age of 38.2. All subjects at the third wave measure are,therefore, well into adulthood. The addition of the third wave of data tothe Ohio life-course study adds to prior life-course studies of criminaloffending as it provides a detailed account of offending well into adult-hood for a contemporary sample of serious male and female juvenileoffenders. Additionally, incorporating the third wave of data allows for amore concrete operational definition of persistence and desistance as wellas for the conceptualization of an unstable group whose offending is moreepisodic.

DEPENDENT VARIABLES

GENERAL CRIMINAL OFFENDING

Adult criminal offending was measured by a modified version of theElliott, Huizinga, and Ageton (1985) self-reported delinquency scale withage inappropriate items, such as status offenses, removed from the scale,as well as alcohol and drug use measures removed because those two vari-ables are used as independent measures in the current study. Each offenseis assigned a seriousness weight derived from the National Survey ofCrime Severity (Wolfgang et al., 1985) and then multiplied by the self-reported frequency of each behavior to create an offending scale thataccounts for the frequency of offending as well as for the seriousness ofeach offense. The reference period for each set of offenses is the year priorto the interview. The scale shows a high degree of reliability with aChronbach alpha score of .91 at the first wave of the study (N = 254), .89at the second wave (N = 210), and .87 at the third wave (N = 152). Thegeneral criminal offending measure taken from the 1995 wave of the Ohiolife-course study data is used as the dependent variable for cross-sectional

1. A variety of follow-up techniques were used at both follow-up studies to locateas many of these adolescents as possible. Even so, the high rate of sample attri-tion among the Ohio life-course study subjects is potentially problematic. Logis-tic regressions comparing those interviewed in 2003 and those who were missing,however, revealed no significant differences by background characteristics (race,adolescent delinquency, age, or gender) or any key predictors analyzed in thecurrent study (drug use, alcohol use, peer deviance, or partner criminality). Fur-thermore, neither offending nor desistance status at the second wave of the studypredicts third-wave attrition (analyses not shown). Sample attrition across thethree waves of the Ohio life-course study, therefore, although a concern, doesnot seem to introduce systematic bias that would influence these results.

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analyses, and the measure taken from the 2003 wave is used as the depen-dent variable for longitudinal analyses. Both measures are used in the con-struction of the life-course general offending variable.

LIFE-COURSE GENERAL OFFENDING PATTERNS

Because the Ohio life-course data include three waves of data, broadpatterns of offending behavior across three periods of the life course canbe examined, as contrasted with classification schemes that only includetwo waves of data. The assumption governing the classification methodused is that all offenders at the first wave of the study, who were institu-tionalized at the time, were serious and/or frequent offenders as adoles-cents.2 Across the three waves of the Ohio life-course study, desisters areclassified as those subjects who had self-report offending histories free offrequent and/or serious offending and were not incarcerated at both fol-low-up periods, and persisters are classified as those subjects who showfrequent and/or serious offending and/or were incarcerated at both follow-up data collection periods.3 A limitation of the design is that we do notcapture the offending of the subjects between waves of the study. Never-theless, a consistent pattern of incarceration and frequent and/or seriousoffending across two lengthy intervals provides a strong indication of seri-ous, persistent offending. Conversely, self-reports that are free of frequentand/or serious offending across these waves should index a significant lifechange for previous juvenile offenders (see Maruna, 2001). Using this clas-sification scheme, 68 (44.7 percent) valid subjects in the Ohio life-coursestudy are desisters and 39 (25.7 percent) of the subjects are persistentoffenders.

2. Research has shown that the subjects in the Ohio life-course study were moredelinquent at the first measurement period than even the most serious offendersin a comparable household sample of youth from Toledo, Ohio collected at thesame time period (Cernkovich, Giordano, and Pugh, 1985).

3. We have chosen a value of 8.75 on the delinquency scale to be the cutoff valuethat distinguishes between those offenders who can be considered desisters andthose who cannot. The baseline criminal offending value is 7.70, so this valueallows for individuals to have committed one or two very minor offenses, such asbeing drunk in a public place, and still be considered desisters in this study. Weare interested in characterizing respondents who are doing well from a desistancestandpoint—relative to their counterparts in this sample. If we were to rely on astrategy of classifying only those with zero involvement as desisters, this wouldreduce the number of desisters significantly. Bushway, Thornberry, and Krohn(2003) point out that many studies of desistance include individuals who commitnonserious and infrequent acts of deviance and are classified (perhaps inappro-priately) as persistent offenders. We thus allow very minor and infrequentoffending in an effort to avoid classifying minor and infrequent offenders as per-sistent offenders. We also estimated models using the zero-involvement defini-tion and other minor variations, and the results are similar (analyses not shown).

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A final category in our life-course criminal offending classificationscheme is an unstable group of offenders. Unstable offenders are thosesubjects who cannot reasonably be considered either stable persistentoffenders or stable desisters. This includes the “zigzag” (Glaser, 1964;Laub and Sampson, 2003) behavioral pattern and is evident when the seri-ous adolescent offenders are classified as desisters at the second wave ofthe study but again self-report offending at the third wave. This patternshows offending instability across the life course, as the subjects were seri-ously delinquent as adolescents, gave up crime for at least one year priorto the second wave of data collection, and then revisited their earlier crim-inal offending prior to the third wave interviews. The unstable group alsoincludes those offenders who were classified as persistent offenders at thefirst follow-up period but had desisted from criminal offending by the sec-ond follow-up period, also known as late desisters (see Laub and Samp-son, 2003).4 The unstable offender category in our study includes 45 (26.9percent) subjects.

INDEPENDENT MEASURES

SUBSTANCE USE

The measures of drug and alcohol use used in our study are indices thatinclude both the frequency of drug and alcohol use and the problems thathave resulted from using such substances. The drug and alcohol use fre-quency measures in the Ohio life-course study are measured on a 9-pointscale indicating the frequency at which drugs and alcohol were used duringthe year previous to the survey. The problem alcohol and drug use scalescomprise 6 items each that assess the frequency at which the subjectsexperienced negative effects of alcohol and drug use, such as having notfelt so good, unable to do a good job at work, gotten into trouble, hit afamily member, gotten into fights, or stolen money because of drugs oralcohol.5 The alcohol and drug use indices are both created by summing

4. Respondents who report little or no offending at the most recent follow-up couldbe classified as desisters, but we are reluctant to include these individuals in thesame category as respondents who have shown a more sustained pattern of crimecessation. Furthermore, in descriptive comparisons between these late desistersand stable desisters, the two groups of subjects differ significantly on a range ofcharacteristics, such as drug use, anger identity, and time married (analyses notshown), indicating that it may be inappropriate to consider these late desistersequivalent to the category of stable desisters. We estimated models that did cate-gorize later desisters in this fashion, however, and results are not substantiallydifferent. We also experimented with a two-category classification scheme (desis-ters vs. all others), and the results presented below are similar to those findings.

5. The frequency of drug and alcohol use does not necessarily indicate that drugsand alcohol have negative effects on the lives of individuals. We thus include inour substance use measures a scale that assesses the frequency at which drugs

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the frequency and the problem alcohol and drug use.6

ADULT SOCIAL BONDS

Marital/intimate partner happiness is measured using a single item thatasks the respondents to rate their degree of happiness in their current rela-tionship on a scale ranging from 1 (extremely unhappy) to 7 (perfect).Employment bonds are assessed with a measure of occupational prestigethat classifies the respondent’s occupation ranging from service workersand laborers (coded 1) to executives, administrators, and managers (coded7).7

SOCIAL NETWORKS

The peer deviance scale used in our current study comprises 9 itemstaken from the 1995 wave of the survey. The subjects were asked to assessthe approximate proportion of their peers who engaged in certain criminalacts during the year previous to the second follow-up study using a 5-itemresponse category (1 = none of them, 5 = all of them). The peer deviancescale shows a high degree of reliability (alpha = .94).

Partner criminality is measured by a modified version of the Elliott, Hui-zinga, and Ageton (1985) delinquency scale with the seriousness weights,as reported by the respondent about their romantic partner’s behavior

and alcohol cause problems in the lives of the OLS subjects to provide a morecomprehensive measure of drug and alcohol use. Analyses assessing the effects ofthe frequency and problem scales separately revealed similar results as the com-bined measure.

6. Drug and alcohol use are strongly correlated (r = .564). In an effort to clearlydistinguish drug users from the other subjects, we created three mutually exclu-sive categories of drug and alcohol use [high drug use (N = 42), high alcohol–lowdrug use (N = 17), and equally low on both (N = 151)] and find that the high drugcategory shows a significantly stronger effect on offending at both follow-upstudies than either contrast category, net of the sociodemographic variables andadolescent delinquency. The high alcohol category (regardless of level of druguse) does not show a significant impact on offending at either follow-up whencontrasted with the low alcohol–low drug category. There is clearly a uniqueeffect of drug use on crime.

7. Of the 210 subjects included at the first follow-up, there were 7 missing cases onthe marital happiness variable and 9 missing cases on the occupational prestigemeasure; all other respondents reported involvement in a romantic relationshipand being currently employed. The effects of these variables on offending arerobust to several missing data procedures (listwise deletion, assigning missingvalues a value of zero, and mean substitution). In an attempt to maintain thehighest sample size possible and remain consistent with the missing data substitu-tion techniques employed for other variables in our current study, mean substitu-tion is used for our marital happiness and occupational prestige measures.

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during the 1995 data collection period. Higher values indicate greater part-ner criminality (alpha = .83).

SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC CONTROLS

Age, race, gender, and adolescent delinquency have been implicated asfactors that contribute to life-course patterns of criminal behavior (Elliott,1994; Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990; Loeber and LeBlanc, 1990; Mooreand Hagedorn, 1999) and are therefore used as control variables in thecurrent study.

ANAYLTIC STRATEGY

The first two sets of regression models used in our analysis present ordi-nary least-squares regressions predicting both cross-sectional (1995) andlongitudinal (2004) criminal behavior.8 The mediating role of adult socialbonds and social network characteristics is assessed using a statisticalmethod for assessing the magnitude and statistical significance of indirecteffects developed by Preacher and Hayes (2004) and was recentlyextended to include multiple mediator models with covariates (Preacherand Hayes, 2006).9 The Preacher and Hayes method uses the multivariatedelta method to obtain the standard error used to calculate the statisticalsignificance of the mediation effect and employs a bias corrected and accel-erated bootstrapping technique (a nonparametric resampling procedureused in the mediation analyses to empirically estimate the sampling distri-bution of the indirect effect, thus reducing problems with type I errors andlow statistical power endemic to analyses that rely on assumptions of sam-pling distribution normality). The procedure generates a confidence inter-val for the indirect effect, and when the interval does not include zero, wecan conclude that the indirect effect is significantly different from zero atthe given confidence level.10

8. The offending scales at both follow-up data collections periods are moderatelyskewed in the positive direction. The findings of the study, however, are robust tolog and inverse data transformation procedures performed on both offendingmeasures. The results shown then are predicting the non-transformed offendingvariables [see Kennedy and Bush (1985) for a detailed rationale for using thenon-transformed variable when the results are robust to transformations].

9. This article is currently under review, and the macro commands for SPSS andSAS can be found at http://www.comm.ohio-state.edu/ahayes/SPSS%20pro-grams/indirect.htm.

10. See Bishop, Feinberg, and Holland (1975) for the mathematical derivation of themultivariate delta method of calculating the standard error estimate and Efronand Tibshirani (1998) for a detailed discussion of bootstrapping techniques,including the bias corrected and accelerated bootstrap.

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DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES 203

Additional life-course offending analyses are conducted using multino-mial logistic regression techniques, which are estimated by maximum like-lihood estimation methods (Aldrich and Nelson, 1984).11 The mediatingrole of adult social bonds, social network characteristics, and deviant self-concepts is assessed using a more basic method that suggests when theeffect of an independent variable on a dependent variable decreases tozero with the addition of a mediating variable, complete mediation hasoccurred, and when the effect of the independent variable on a dependentvariable decreases by a nontrivial amount with the addition of a mediatingvariable, partial mediation has occurred (Baron and Kenny, 1986).

FINDINGS

DIFFERENTIAL EFFECT OF DRUG AND ALCOHOL USE

We begin by explicitly comparing the effect of drug and alcohol use onadult offending levels reported at the time of the first adult follow-upinterview with these respondents (conducted in 1995) and the second adultfollow-up (conducted in 2003). The bivariate correlations (analyses notshown) between drug and alcohol use at the first adult follow-up and crim-inal offending at the same time period are both positive and statisticallysignificant (r = .624 and .482, p < .01, respectively), and the bivariate corre-lations between drug and alcohol use at the first adult follow-up and crimi-nal offending at the second adult follow-up (analyses not shown) revealsimilar significant positive associations (r = .373 and .280, p < .01, respec-tively). The results presented in the first two models in table 1 furtherindicate that both drug and alcohol use exert significant independenteffects on cross-sectional criminal offending net of the sociodemographicfactors and adolescent delinquency.

The relative impact of drug and alcohol use on reports of criminalinvolvement becomes more evident when drug and alcohol use areincluded in the same competing regression model. Although the thirdmodel in table 1 confirms that both drug and alcohol use show a positiveassociation with criminal offending at the first follow-up, the standardizedregression coefficients indicate that drug use bears a stronger relationshipto self-reported offending. When the effect of drug and alcohol use areassessed jointly in the longitudinal model, the association between alcohol

11. Ordinal logistic regression techniques are also appropriate techniques for investi-gations of life-course criminal offending, but the ordinal models assume anunderlying continuous variable captured by the dichotomous measures. In ourcurrent study, however, we assume that the three categories of offenders arequalitatively distinct and therefore do not represent an underlying continuousprocess captured by the variables.

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204 SCHROEDER, GIORDANO & CERNKOVICH

Tab

le 1

.O

rdin

ary

Lea

st-S

quar

es R

egre

ssio

n E

stim

atin

g C

rim

inal

Off

endi

ng:

Dif

fere

ntia

l E

ffec

tsof

Alc

ohol

and

Dru

g U

se

Fir

st F

ollo

w-U

p (1

995)

Seco

nd F

ollo

w-U

p (2

003)

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 3

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 3

Soci

odem

ogra

phic

Age

–.02

6–.

026

–.02

2–.

037

–.05

7–.

038

Gen

der

(mal

e =

1)

.096

†.0

81.0

80.1

58*

.154

†.1

55†

Rac

e (m

inor

ity

= 1

).2

23**

*.2

71**

*.2

23**

*.0

79.1

10.0

78A

dole

scen

t B

ehav

ior

Ado

lesc

ent

delin

quen

cy.1

84**

.204

**.1

62**

.195

*.2

17*

.192

*Su

bsta

nce

Use

Dru

g us

e.5

40**

*—

.467

***

.290

***

—.2

78**

Alc

ohol

use

—.3

91**

*.1

43*

—.1

71*

.022

F =

36.8

06**

*21

.269

***

32.1

71**

*7.

755*

**5.

58**

*6.

430*

**R

2 =.3

43.4

72.2

10.1

60.2

10N

=21

0—

—15

2—

†p <

.10

; *p

< .

05;

**p

< .

01;

***p

< .

001.

NO

TE

: St

anda

rdiz

ed c

oeff

icie

nts

repo

rted

.

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DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES 205

use and 2003 offending diminishes to nonsignificance, but drug use main-tains a significant positive association with long-term offending.12 Theresults thus suggest that drug use is more closely tied to criminal offend-ing, whether examined in a cross-sectional or a longitudinal assessment.13

Results in table 2 distinguish the three life-course patterns of criminaloffending, taking into account the self-report information drawn fromboth adult interview waves (desistance contrasted with persistence, desis-tance contrasted with unstable offending, and unstable offending con-trasted with persistence). Independently, drug and alcohol use are bothsignificantly associated with reduced odds of criminal desistance comparedwith persistent and unstable offending patterns. Drug use is also associ-ated with reduced odds of unstable offending when compared with persis-tent offending, a pattern not shown by heavy alcohol use. Furtherillustrating the differential long-term effect of drug and alcohol use, thecompeting model (Model 3) reveals that drug use is significantly associ-ated with lower odds of desistance compared with persistent and unstableoffending as well as with reduced odds of unstable offending comparedwith persistent offending across the life course. Alcohol use is not signifi-cantly associated with membership in these categories.

Laub and Sampson (2003) theorize similarities in the effects of alcoholand drug use as influences on crime across the life course, and consistentwith their claim, the results of the current study reveal that alcohol anddrug use both show positive associations with criminal offending in 1995and 2003 and both independently distinguish between offending patternsacross the life course. When the effects of alcohol and drug use on crimeare considered jointly, however, it is clear that drug use is a more powerfulcorrelate/predictor of offending, whether viewed cross-sectionally, longitu-dinally, or in the context of total life-course offending patterns.14 Subse-quent analyses focus on mechanisms through which drug and alcohol useinfluence criminal behavior.

12. A check of the variance inflation factors (VIFs) for each regression modelreveals that multicollinearity does not affect our findings.

13. There is reason to believe that drugs use is more strongly associated with prop-erty crime and that alcohol is more strongly associated with violent crime (seeStaley, 1992). In our current study, alcohol use does show a slightly strongereffect on violent crime, but across all offenses, drug use remains a much strongerpredictor of offending.

14. Although drug and alcohol use among the OLS subjects is remarkably stablefrom the first adult follow-up to the second, we also examined the influence ofchanges in drug use from the first to the second adult follow-up and found thatchange in drug use is a much stronger predictor of offending than change in alco-hol use at the second adult follow-up (analyses not shown).

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206 SCHROEDER, GIORDANO & CERNKOVICH

Tab

le 2

.M

ulti

nom

ial

Log

isti

c R

egre

ssio

n E

stim

atin

g L

ife-

Cou

rse

Cri

min

al O

ffen

ding

Pat

tern

s:D

iffe

rent

ial

Eff

ects

of

Dru

g an

d A

lcoh

ol U

se

Des

ista

nce

vs.

Per

sist

ence

Des

ista

nce

vs.

Uns

tabl

eU

nsta

ble

vs.

Per

sist

ence

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 3

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 3

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 3

Soci

odem

ogra

phic

Age

–.02

7.0

36–.

028

.259

.285

†.2

64–.

286

–.24

9–.

291

Gen

der

(mal

e =

1)

–1.1

75*

–.95

3†–1

.122

*.0

82.1

89.1

45–1

.256

*–1

.143

*–1

.268

*R

ace

(min

orit

y =

1)

–1.1

87*

–1.2

72**

–1.1

92*

–.80

1†–.

838*

–.79

9†–.

386

–.43

4–.

394

Ado

lesc

ent

Beh

avio

rA

dole

scen

t de

linqu

ency

–.00

7**

–.00

6**

–.00

6†–.

003

–.00

3–.

002

–.00

4†–.

004†

–.00

4†Su

bsta

nce

Use

Dru

g us

e–.

361*

**—

–.32

7***

–.21

5***

—–.

186*

*–.

146*

—–.

140*

Alc

ohol

use

—–.

231*

**–.

090

—–.

141*

–.07

3—

–.09

1–.

017

Mod

el X

2 =

68.6

69**

*48

.809

***

70.4

05**

*R

2 L =

.211

.150

.217

N =

152

†p <

.10

; *p

< .

05;

**p

< .

01;

***p

< .

001.

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DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES 207

MEDIATING MECHANISMS

ADULT SOCIAL BONDS

Laub and Sampson (2003) emphasize the detrimental impact that sub-stance use has on marital and employment attachments as the principlemechanism linking substance use to criminal offending across the lifecourse. In the context of the current study, drug use shows a significantnegative correlation with our measure of relationship quality (perceivedhappiness with the marital/romantic partner) and occupational prestige(–.186, p < .01 and –.147, p < .05, respectively), whereas alcohol use showsa moderately significant negative correlation with relationship happiness(–.121, p < .10) and is not significantly related to levels of occupationalprestige.

Analyses that explore the mediating role of adult social bonds in therelationship between drug and alcohol use and crime, however, indicatethat the adult social bond variables explain little of the relationship (com-pare tables 1 and 3). Using the Preacher and Hayes (2006) method forassessing the mediating capacity of intervening variables, the resultspresented in table 4 indicate that neither romantic relationship happinessnor occupational prestige significantly mediates the relationship betweendrug and alcohol use and offending levels reported by respondents ateither the first or second adult interviews, as the confidence intervalsshown in the table for the indirect effect of the social bond measuresinclude zero as a possible value at both adult follow-up periods. Lastly, theaddition of the adult social bond measures to the life-course offendinganalysis does not alter the effect of either drug or alcohol use, which sug-gests that adult social bonds do not have a strong role as mediators inunderstanding variations in life-course patterns of criminal offending(shown in table 4). Adult social bonds do not in the context of this sampleact as powerful mediators in the relationship between substance use andcrime, whether considering cross-sectional, longitudinal, or life-course pat-terns of criminal offending.15

SOCIAL NETWORKS

The bivariate correlations in the current study indicate a significant pos-itive relationship between drug and alcohol use and deviant peers (r = .438and .441, p < .01, respectively) and between deviant peers and criminaloffending in both 1995 and 2003 (r = .369 and .275, p < .01, respectively).The results shown in table 3, however, suggest that peer deviance does not

15. We also examined the impact of other measures of bonding, such as marital/employment status, number of years married/employed, and different indices ofmarital satisfaction/employment quality, and a similar portrait emerges, regard-less of the measures employed (analyses available on request).

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208 SCHROEDER, GIORDANO & CERNKOVICH

Table 3. Ordinary Least-Squares Regression EstimatingCriminal Offending: Mediating Mechanisms

First Follow-Up (1995) Second Follow-Up (2003)Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

SociodemographicAge –.020 –.029 –.040 –.042Gender (male = 1) .083 .075 .163* .183*Race (minority = 1) .220*** .207*** .072 .074

Adolescent BehaviorAdolescent delinquency .161** .143** .199* .188*

Substance UseDrug use .460*** .354*** .268** .151Alcohol use .143* .107† .019 –.018

Adult Social BondsPartner happiness –.026 –.001 –.084 –.045Occupational prestige –.018 –.024 .057 .056

Social NetworksPeer deviance — .056 — .035Partner criminality — .240*** — .262**

F = 23.990*** 23.041*** 5.022*** 5.255***R2 = .537 .219 .272N = 210 152

†p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.NOTE: Standardized coefficients reported.

have a significant effect on offending at either adult follow-up period. Fur-thermore, peer deviance does not significantly mediate the effect of drugor alcohol use on either crime as measured contemporaneously in 1995 oras a predictor of 2003 offending, as shown in table 4.

Romantic partner criminality in the current study is further significantlyassociated with drug and alcohol use (r = .461 and .330, p < .01, respec-tively) as well as with criminal offending at both adult follow-up data col-lection periods (r = .512 and .383, p < .01, respectively) at the bivariatelevel. Romantic partner criminality does significantly mediate the relation-ship between drug use and criminal offending at the first (p < .05, confi-dence interval = .056 to .327) and second adult follow-up (p < .05,confidence interval = .024 to .443), but it does not seem that alcohol effectsoperate through this mediating mechanism (see table 4).

Turning to the life-course criminal offending patterns, both romanticpartner criminality and peer deviance significantly decrease the odds ofdesistance when compared with persistent offending (results shown in

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DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES 209

Tab

le 4

.B

ias

Cor

rect

ed a

nd A

ccel

erat

ed C

onfi

denc

e In

terv

als

for

Med

iati

on E

ffec

ts (

1,00

0B

oots

trap

Sam

ples

) Fir

st F

ollo

w-U

p O

ffen

ding

(19

95)

Seco

nd F

ollo

w-U

p O

ffen

ding

(20

03)

Med

iato

rsD

rug

Use

Alc

ohol

Use

Dru

g U

seA

lcoh

ol U

se

Par

tner

hap

pine

ss–.

041

.048

–.03

0.0

23–.

018

.075

–.03

4.0

21O

ccup

atio

nal

pres

tige

–.01

3.0

43–.

028

.009

–.07

2.0

07–.

012

.064

Pee

r de

vian

ce–.

035

.123

–.02

4.1

40–.

056

.127

–.06

3.1

58P

artn

er c

rim

inal

ity

.056

.327

–.02

1.1

54.0

24.4

43–.

063

.158

Tota

l m

edia

tion

eff

ect

.071

.355

–.02

7.1

94.0

18.4

99–.

072

.259

N =

210

N =

152

NO

TE

S: T

he o

ffen

ding

mea

sure

s ar

e de

pend

ent

vari

able

s, a

nd d

rug

use

and

alco

hol u

se a

re t

he in

depe

nden

t m

easu

res

bein

g m

edia

ted.

Bol

d nu

mbe

rs r

epre

sent

sig

nifi

cant

med

iati

on e

ffec

ts (

p <

.05

).

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210 SCHROEDER, GIORDANO & CERNKOVICH

table 5). Additionally, romantic partner criminality decreases the odds ofdesistance compared with unstable offending and unstable offending whencompared with persistent offending. The addition of both social networkmeasures to the life-course offending analysis substantially decreases theeffect of drug use on these behavioral patterns, reducing the effect of druguse in the contrast between unstable offending and persistence and desis-tance to nonsignificance and reducing the significance level of drug use inthe contrast between desistance and persistent offending from p < .001 top < .05. Partner criminality and peer deviance are thus particularly salientexplanatory mechanisms in the relationship between drug use and persis-tent criminal offending across the life course.

DISCUSSION

Laub and Sampson’s (2003) recent work emphasizes the role of alcoholuse in sustaining persistent criminal behavior across the life course and asa factor associated with episodic offending. Although the authors recog-nize that drug use is also associated with persistent criminality, Laub andSampson (2003) discount the differences between alcohol and drugs asproducing distinct effects on offending patterns across the life span. In thisarticle, we investigated the differential impact of drugs and alcohol on sus-tained criminal offending and desistance processes and examined the roleof adult social bonds and social network affiliations as explanatory mecha-nisms linking drugs and alcohol to long-term patterns of criminal behavior.

Within the context of this longitudinal study focused on a contemporarysample of highly delinquent youth, we found that drug use has a strongsustained connection to criminal offending. Alcohol use also shows astrong contemporaneous effect on criminal offending, but the effect ofdrug use is stronger and shows a more sustained long-term influence. Ourdata reveal that drugs do indeed exert a differential impact on criminaloffending. The finding that drug use has a strong impact on criminaloffending is certainly not in itself novel (see Anglin and Speckart, 1988;Dawkins, 1997; Elliott, Huizinga, and Menard, 1989), but our data allowedfor an assessment of the complications of drugs on criminal offendingacross a longer period of time.

The Glueck subjects used in the Laub and Sampson (2003) researchnavigated through adolescence and transitioned into adult roles during the1940s and 1950s, a time period not characterized by high rates of drug usein the United States (see Glueck and Glueck, 1950). Recent research hasdocumented that youth in the 1980s, especially minority youth, faced muchdifferent life circumstances than youth in post-World War II society(Amato, 1997; Crockett and Silbereisen, 2000); youth in the 1980s wereheavily exposed to a world of drugs, including crack cocaine (Tonry, 1995).

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DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES 211

Tab

le 5

.M

ulti

nom

ial

Log

isti

c R

egre

ssio

n E

stim

atin

g L

ife-

Cou

rse

Cri

min

al O

ffen

ding

Pat

tern

s:M

edia

ting

Mec

hani

sms

Des

ista

nce

vs.

Per

sist

ence

Des

ista

nce

vs.

Uns

tabl

eU

nsta

ble

vs.

Per

sist

ence

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Soci

odem

ogra

phic

Age

.012

.091

.278

.359

†–.

267

–.26

8G

ende

r (m

ale

= 1

)–1

.078

†–1

.285

†.1

00.1

56–1

.178

*–1

.440

*R

ace

(min

orit

y =

1)

–1.2

10*

–1.6

29**

–.75

2†–.

891†

–.45

9–.

738

Ado

lesc

ent

Beh

avio

rA

dole

scen

t de

linqu

ency

–.00

7**

–.00

7*–.

002

–.00

3–.

004†

–.00

4†Su

bsta

nce

Use

Dru

g us

e–.

323*

**–.

215*

–.16

5*–.

117

–.15

8*–.

097

Alc

ohol

use

–.09

7.0

05–.

079

–.00

1–.

018

.006

Adu

lt S

ocia

l B

onds

Par

tner

hap

pine

ss.1

76.0

64.2

75†

.253

–.09

9–.

189

Occ

upat

iona

l pr

esti

ge–.

234

–.27

5.0

63.0

32–.

297

–.30

7So

cial

Net

wor

ksP

eer

devi

ance

—–.

748*

—–.

411

—–.

338

Par

tner

cri

min

alit

y—

–.65

1**

—–.

574*

*—

–.07

7†

Mod

el X

2 =

76.1

83**

*10

1.53

6***

R2 L

=.2

34.3

12N

=15

2

†p <

.10

; *p

< .

05;

**p

< .

01;

***p

< .

001.

NO

TE

: U

nsta

ndar

dize

d be

ta v

alue

s pr

esen

ted.

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212 SCHROEDER, GIORDANO & CERNKOVICH

Our results clearly show that, within the context of our contemporary sam-ple of previously delinquent youth, drugs compared with alcohol have amore powerful and sustained effect on life-course patterns of criminaloffending. Life-course research emphasizes the role of historicity in inter-preting the effects of events and circumstances (Elder, 1998), and this his-torical distinction may significantly influence the character ofcontemporary life-course patterns of criminal activity. Although we couldnot document historical shifts directly in the current investigation, the useof a contemporary data set provides an update to previous research basedon samples collected in earlier eras.

Our study also investigated several possible mechanisms contributing tothe effect of both alcohol and drug use on criminal offending across thelife course. Consistent with their age-graded theory of informal social con-trol, Laub and Sampson (2003) argue that heavy alcohol use contributes tosustained criminality through the detrimental impact of alcohol on mar-riage and employment opportunities and that similar effects of drug usehave been identified by other work. In contrast to previous research, ourdata reveal that, in the aggregate, adult social bonds do not have a signifi-cant long-term effect on criminal involvement and that social bonds do notsignificantly mediate the relationship between drug and alcohol use andoffending.

The Glueck subjects were strongly influenced by the informal socialcontrol offered through marriage and employment (Laub and Sampson,2001; Laub, Nagin, and Sampson, 1998; Sampson and Laub, 1993),whereas consistently positive results of marriage and job quality are notobserved within this more contemporary sample group. As severalresearchers, including Sampson and Laub (2001), have pointed out, stablework for those with little education or specialized skills has become muchmore difficult to attain. With low average educational attainment levels(approximately 90 percent did not graduate from high school) and signifi-cant criminal histories, most respondents who participated in the Ohiolife-course study have not been able to secure the type of high-qualityemployment that provides adequate support for themselves and their chil-dren. Directly related to this outcome, the character and anchoring poten-tial of marriage has also undergone substantial transformation [i.e., higherprevalence of cohabitation (Seltzer, 2000) and greater likelihood ofdivorce (Cherlin, 1992)]. In analyses focused on the first wave of adultinterviews with these respondents, we found that marriage and employ-ment factors did not seem to clearly distinguish desisters from the morecriminally active respondents who participated in the survey (Giordano,Cernkovich, and Rudolph, 2002). The findings reported here tell a similarstory, but they provide an even longer window of assessment, as theyincorporate longitudinal data based on a second adult interview conducted

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DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES 213

when the respondents averaged 38 years of age. Our view is that cohortshifts are important to an understanding of the lack of significance of thesesocial bonding measures. In short, if only a few OLS respondents have agood job, then it is difficult for a “good job” to exert a powerful effect onvariations in offending observed across this sample group.

Similarly, only 8 percent of the sample report being married at bothwaves of the adult interviews and an even smaller number was married tothe same individual. This apparent instability in domestic partnershipsprovides a strong contrast to the modal lifestyle circumstances exper-ienced by the Glueck men (i.e., a majority were married once and stayedmarried to the same individual). Certainly other more contemporary stud-ies have documented the positive effects of marriage and employment(Horney, Osgood, and Marshall, 1995; Uggen, 2000; Warr, 1998), but themajority of these analyses did not rely on samples of early starting delin-quents, such as those included in the Glueck and OLS data collectionefforts.

Although adult social bonds do not substantially influence variations inself-reported criminal behavior or mediate the drug–crime relationship,social network affiliations proved to be more important as a mediator.Drug use is associated with peer group deviance and romantic partnercriminality, which in turn are significantly associated with higher levels ofreported criminal involvement. Prior analyses using the OLS data havedocumented contemporaneous associations between social network affilia-tions and crime (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Holland, 2003), but the cur-rent analyses show an intimate connection of social network affiliations todrug involvement and effects across a longer period of time. Althoughsocial networks do not completely explain the relationship between druguse and life-course patterns of criminal behavior, the findings of thisresearch underscore that drug use and its lifestyle concomitants bringtogether a host of distinct social network dynamics that uniquely compli-cate desistance processes. Overall, our results indicate that social networksassociated with drug use and the drug culture are a more important, albeitincomplete, mechanism through which we observe an influence of drugson criminal involvement.

This research affirms an important role of the partner, but it indicatesthat principles of differential association theory need to be more fullyincorporated into life-course perspectives on criminal involvement. Theresults indicate that peer affiliations also matter, but they do not seem tobe stand-alone influences for these adult respondents. The practical impli-cations of these findings are that, although it would be ideal if offenderscould develop strong bonds to a prosocial partner (and if they could attainemployment that provided for the complete package), the respectability of

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the spouse/partner rather than the quality of the relationship seems to be amore critical consideration.

Recent theorizing has focused on subjective factors associated with suc-cessful desistance, such as the offender’s own motivation to change (Gior-dano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph, 2002), a changing calculus about theperceived rewards of crime (Shover, 1996), and the like. However, theresults of the current analyses provide evidence of a tangible lifestyle fac-tor, drug involvement, that may compromise the individual’s ability tolaunch or sustain a successful move away from crime, even if generallyinclined to do so. Although many OLS respondents reported periods ofabstinence from drugs and a desire to lead a more conforming life, theaddictive properties of substances such as heroin and crack cocaine, thepresence of numerous life stresses, and the marginalizing effects of associ-ating with similarly situated individuals often combined to increase signifi-cantly the likelihood of either criminal persistence or a pattern of episodicderailments. These findings indicate that, even though all respondents wefollowed into adulthood have faced formidable challenges economicallyand socially, those who have managed to avoid a serious drug problemhave fared better than their drug-involved counterparts. This result addsto a considerable body of prior research that has previously demonstrateddrug–crime linkages, using different methodological strategies and oftenshorter periods of assessment.

Future research in this area will benefit from more frequent assessmentsof criminal involvement than we have been able to include in the currentanalysis, and data collection efforts that include larger, diverse sampleswill allow researchers to investigate the ways in which such factors as race/ethnicity complicate the drug–crime and social network linkages we havedescribed in this investigation. As the OLS is relatively unusual in includ-ing a large number of female offenders in the sample design, ongoing anal-yses focus on ways in which gender influences the processes and outcomesof interest.

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Ryan D. Schroeder is an assistant professor of sociology at the Univer-sity of Louisville. His research interests include desistance processes, witha particular focus on the role of alcohol and drug use, emotional develop-ment, and religious transformations.

Peggy C. Giordano is a distinguished research professor of sociology atBowling Green State University. Her research focuses on desistanceprocesses as well as on the ways in which social relationships influencedelinquency involvement. She has recently completed a follow-up of theadolescent children of the respondents who participated in the Ohio life-course study, with a particular focus on mechanisms underlying theintergenerational transmission of crime and other problem outcomes.

Stephen A. Cernkovich is a professor of sociology at Bowling GreenState University. His research interests include the long-term conse-quences of early involvement in antisocial behavior, race and gender vari-ations in deviant behavior, and the transmission of deviant behavior fromparents who were highly antisocial during their youth to their own adoles-cent children.