The Adolescent Drug-crime Relationship: Desistence and Gateway Theories Across User Levels (Criminal Justice)

Whiteford examines adolescent drug use and its relationship to self-report crime, criminal arrests, and criminal versatility. He demonstrates five distinct and mutually exclusive drug use groups, including three different types of heavy drug user. Significant differences were found among the clusters when regressed on age, gender, income subsidies, and race and when used as predictors of the three measures of crime. Whiteford also demonstrates support for both the gateway hypothesis and the life course perspective because life-course-persistent youths were more likely to begin drug use earlier, and cease use later, than adolescent-limited youths.