Drug Use and Young Offenders, Is There a Connection?

INTERVIEW / Fabiana Cantero and Fernando Veneziale

Drug abuse and juvenile offending are often thrown in the same bag without much clarity as to what connects one issue to the other. A program in Argentina tries to untie precisely that knot, the Programa de Assistencia e Pesquisa sobre Dependencia, that belongs to Argentina’s National Office for Childhood, Adolescence and Family. Its recent study describes, in its title, the scope of their research: "Estudio sobre perfiles sociales y patrones de consumo de sustancias psicoactivas en adolescentes residentes en dispositivos de régimen cerrado” or A study of the social profile and standards of psychoactive substance abuse among adolescent detainees in full detention.

According to psychologist Fabiana Cantero and sociologist Fernando Veneziale (photo) authors, there is no simple cause and effect connection for the use of psychoactive substances and criminal activity among young offenders. This is not to say that no cases were found of crimes committed under the influence of psychoactive drugs, but that it is impossible to state that there is a cause and effect relation between the prior use of drugs and the subsequent offending acts.
Cantero and Veneziale note other elements at play with more significant roles in offending behavior, such as an environment of profound social exclusion and lack of opportunities. Little schooling, unemployment – or a job market that is precarious and undocumented- recidivism and childhood or adolescent experiences shaped by living on the streets, poverty and violence; these are the elements that pave the way for offending behavior, such as robbery, theft, and defiant attitudes such as the use of illegal and legal psychoactive substances.

Study results show that drug use among adolescents is more prevalent from age 16 on, and that the average age of first drug use is between12 and 13. The study also notes the introduction of ‘pasta-base’ or cocaine sulfate has been growing over the past 10 years.

The study first establishes the life-style and problems of a group of young detainees, and offers socio-demographic variables to aid the design preventative public policies.

The study applied a questionnaire to a group of 218 adolescent detainees in full custody centers that belong to the Office for Children, Adolescents and Famitly (one of them was the Instituto San Marín, photo). According to data provided by the Office, an average 230 to 250 teenagers are housed in each detention center. Cantero and Veneziale gave Comunidad Segura an exclusive interview from Buenos Aires.

There is a popular notion that drug use among youths leads to offending. According to your study that is not necessarily true. What affects the youths you studied?

According to our survey, there is no direct association between drug use and offending, if you take drug use as an agent that leads an adolescent to commit crimes. What we found was that in many cases drug use is associated with a situation of profound social exclusion. It is true that social vulnerability does not cause offending, but we have to take into account how this process affects both the young person’s subjectivity and the real life experiences on lives that are still being shaped.

Could you explain further?

All the social indicators revealed point to life experiences that are profoundly shaped by material and symbolic possession. These are aggravated by the revolving door experience of entering, leaving and returning to the corrections system. In this sense it is possible to consider what R. Merton, the sociologist, stated about anomie, that is, of youths who seeing they are barred from the approved of means to social ascension, resort to offending as a “legitimate option” in their eyes, creating a fuzzy boundary between legal and illegal activities.

Are some drugs more highly associated to offending than others?
 
In those cases in we report a relation between offending and being under the effect of specific drugs, are most often associated to the use of cocaine sulfate and psychopharmaceuticals. Cocaine sulfate has short term effects so it requires continued use, and as a result a continuous need for cash to buy the drug.

As for psychopharmaceuticals, (especially benzodiazepines), an indiscriminate use of them, or combining their use with other drugs leads youths to commit transgressions, but they are not aware of their actions. This lowered perception of the self, explains, partly, lowered levels of inhibition as a factor that leads to offending.

The study mentions there is a higher tendency for drug abuse as of age 16. Why?

In fact, 16 was also the average age of the youths in custody that we interviewed. We think that this early age is not an accident, but that it relates to the types of lives they lead. It is a milestone for this part of the population. 

A 16 year old has by this age, acquired a significant history of extreme life experiences and continued exposure to risk. The penal agencies do not take them out of crime, they only capture them into short periods that alternate in a revolving door cycle of permanence in the corrections system, that increases their vulnerability.

Your study mentions that the first contact with drugs takes place between age 12 and 13. Why such early contact?

A first hypothesis for this is that a very large number of youths live in urban areas of extreme poverty that also enable for easy access to drugs through either the drug trade and an entire system of retail drugs sales by locals residents, who sell them for subsistence. Another important factor is that practically all youths drop out of school and thus find themselves with a large amount of free time in hostile neighborhood that offers no opportunities and generates violence.

Why has there been an increased consumption of cocaine sulfite and how does that impact the most vulnerable groups in society?

Cocaine sulfite or pasta-base as it is called locally, has become entered routine drug use in Argentina in the past 10 years, which coincides with the largest economic crisis in the history of the country with uncommonly high rates of poverty and indigence. The great mass of socially excluded people shaped by this process has become a potential consumer market for this drug, that is less costly than other substances,. It is made from  the left overs of refined cocaine, even if its composition varies, but always at a low price.

How do this study’s results compare with results from previous years? What is the trend with respect to drug use in the population studied?

When compared with other work that we have been doing every two years since 2003, the current trend indicators show that the use of certain drugs such as alcohol, cannabis, psychopharmaceuticals and cocaine sulfate have increased, while the use of other substances such as cocaine and solvents has remained unchanged. Another variable to consider is the way the drug us used, since today there is a prevaling use of various drugs simultaneously. Youths have, over their lives, experienced a number of different substances.

And what about alcohol and cannabis?

There are two traits that make alcohol and cannabis quite similar to each other and stand out from other substances: on the one hand they are (used) practically exclusively at first. Later on they present the highest rates of consumption. This piece of information is extremely important because there is an entrenched notion in the public opinion that the (use) of these substances is of lesser importance in contrast to focusing mainly on use of cocaine sulfate, which in our view, while just as important, has filled the prejudiced public imagination and attached stigma to the marginalized part of the population.

If drug use is a fact of life for youths in all sectors of society, how should the State and society in general approach the topic?

It may seem obvious, but we concluded that from experiences we accumulated over the years that taking steps towards social inclusion would help at least mollify this social phenomenon. Basic measures such as including those who have been left out of the educational system would be a good start. As for those who are already deprived of their liberty inside corrections institutions, one should prevent recidivism with active job and reentry programs.

We see that many young offenders, on returning to the same neighborhoods where they had their previous criminal activities and drug use, rejoin old routines. Public policy must include access to housing that allows them to take part in socially shoring-up networks, and this is harder to do in so called “difficult neighborhoods”. If young offenders are returned to their families, they must do so with access to the concrete resources that they need.

The Study, In Spanish (PDF)