Alcohol and drugs, delinquency, and crime : looking back to the future

## Contents and Crime. The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin was generous in their support during the early years of our research when activities were located in Madison. The Vice-President for Research, Dr Duane C. Spriestersbach and Deans Dewey B. Stuit and Howard Laster of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Iowa were very generous in their assistance for many years. The facilities of the Weeg Computing Center continue to be a mainstay for the project. Three people who are listed on the title-page deserve special mention. Judith L. McKim has been involved in the Racine research on the economic absorption and cultural integration of inmigrant workers since 1970 and in the birth cohort research on delinquency and crime since 1972. She worked on the research design, instruments for data collection, and supervised data collection in Racine and data processing in Iowa City. She was involved in analysis and report writing from the beginning. In more recent years and since becoming a social science research assistant emeritus, she has spent most of her time critiquing and editing our reports and publications, most recently this volume. Kathleen R. Anderson joined the Iowa Urban Community Research Center in 1977 as an undergraduate assistant. She has become more and more involved in data analysis and report writing. Her chapters in several reports to the National Institute of Justice made a major contribution to understanding the complexity of the connection between juvenile and adult crime and the problem of errors in prediction. She is currently writing her PhD dissertation with some of the most challenging data that we have collected. William E. Murph is no longer in the Iowa Urban Community Research Center but, fortunately for us, is a Programmer Analyst at American College Testing in Iowa City. His computer-generated typologies for delinquency and crime and substance involvement have enabled us to conduct numerous tests that, however they turned out, provided more satisfying answers to continuity questions than we had had before. He continues to assist us from time to time with his computer expertise and knowledge of the Racine data. This research on juvenile delinquency and adult crime, cast in a perspective of the changing times and problems of the United States and a changing world, analyzes delinquent and criminal behavior as products of the social and structural organization of society. Along with changing offense and judicial action rates for the United States, the conclusions of this volume are based on a longitudinal birth Cohort study of 4079 persons born in 1942, 1949, and 1955, with continuous residence in the community from the age of 6 to early adulthood. Data on their police contacts, dispositions, and sanctions were obtained from the community's police department and other agencies. Self-report and interview data about delinquent and criminal behavior and background experiences were obtained from 889 members of the 1942 and 1949 Cohorts. The 1955 Cohort's data were updated to 1989, recoded and reanalyzed to determine the effect of involvement with alcohol and drugs on serious criminal career continuity.
1. Delinquency And Crime In The United States -- 2. Delinquency And Crime In Racine -- 3. The Ecological Approach To Explaining Delinquency -- 4. The Justice System -- 5. The Prediction Problem -- 6. Career Continuity In Delinquency And Crime And The Prediction Problem -- 7. Narrowing The Focus To Increase Predictive Efficiency -- 8. Thinking About The Drug/crime Relationship -- 9. The Relationship Of Alcohol And Drugs To Delinquency And Crime In Racine -- 10. Alcohol And Drugs And Criminal Career Continuity In The 1955 Cohort -- 11. Summary And Conclusions. Lyle W. Shannon ; With The Assistance Of Judith L. Mckim, Kathleen R. Anderson, William E. Murph. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 192-201) And Index. A longitudinal birth cohort study of juvenile delinquency and adult crime among 4079 persons living in Wisconsin from age 6 to early adulthood. Data on police contacts and their dispositions were obtained from the police department and other agencies and other data were obtained by interviewing samples of the 1942 and 1949 cohorts. The 1955 Cohort data were brought up to 1989, recoded, and reanalyzed to determine the importance of alcohol and drug involvement in criminal career continuity. This book is the culmination of research carried out on juvenile delinquency and adult crime in the Racine, Wisconsin, analysing them as products of the social and structural organisation of society