Illegal drug use, alcohol and aggressive crime among Mexican-American and White male arrestees in San Antonio

FRANÇAIS :
Cette recherche porte sur la relation possible entre l'usage de certaines drogues et des crimes violents commis par ces hommes à San Antonio, Texas, depuis 1992. Basé sur un programme de "prévision d'usages de drogues", un échantillon de 534 hommes ont passé un test d'analyse d'urines et ont répondu à un questionnaire établi par le Département de Justice et la ville de San Antonio. Les résultats montrent qu'il existe un lien complexe mais interprétable entre l'usage de drogues, d'alcool et la criminalité. Un résultat surprenant fut que les crimes les plus violents ont été commis par tous les hommes dont les tests de dépistage de drogues étaient négatifs. Les mexicains américains consommant fréquemment de l'alcool et ayant des tests positifs aux drogues sont deux fois plus que les blancs enclins à commettre ce genre de crimes.
ENGLISH :
This research explores the relationship between use of certain drugs and aggressive crimes among Mexican-American and White male arrestees in San Antonio, Texas, for 1992. This is based on a Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) sample of 534 male arrestees administered a drug urine analysis test and questionnaire by the Department of Justice and the city of San Antonio. Using a four-way asymmetrical analysis, logit-models were tested to examine the relationships between the response variable, the types of crimes charged (nonaggressive versus aggressive) and a set of exploratory variables, ethnicity (White versus Hispanic), drug test results (positive versus negative), and alcohol use (infrequent versus frequent). The logit-analysis allows the specification of a subset of relevant models to be tested for their adequacy of fit. Findings indicate a complex but interpretable pattern between drug use, alcohol use patterns, and aggressive crimes. A surprising finding was that more aggressive crimes were committed by all men testing negative for drugs. Mexican-Americans with frequent alcohol use and testing positive for drugs were twice as likely to commit an aggressive crime (a crime associated with violence) than Whites in the same subgroup. The implication of these findings for prevention strategies aimed at alcohol and other drug users involved in violent behavior is discussed.