Effects of Legal Supervision on Narcotics Use and Criminal Behavior Over the Addiction Career

• NCJ Number: 126040
• Author(s): M D Anglin; E P Dechenes; G Speckart
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 31 pages
• Grant Number(s): 86-IJ-CX-0069; DA04268; D-0001-8
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)

Annotation

A sample of 279 male first admissions to several California methadone maintenance clinics were interviewed to determine the immediacy, duration, and persistence of the effects of legal supervision on narcotics use and criminal behavior. The retrospective longitudinal interview allows an examination of the relationship between the narcotic addiction and criminal careers as well as the impact of legal supervision on both.

Abstract

The independent variable in the study was legal supervision; dependent variables included drug use, criminal behavior, social functioning, and treatment. The findings indicate that while chronic narcotics addicts rebound to criminal behavior and drug use after first legal supervision, there is a cumulative effect of successive periods of legal supervision that may combine with treatment programs and maturity to produce a decrease in narcotics use and crime. Despite a hypothesis that legal supervision effects would diminish over time under supervision, the results indicate that there are few differences from 12 months after entry into supervision to 12 months before discharge. There appear to be some ethnic differences in the way whites and Chicanos react to legal supervision.