NCJ Number
176626
Journal
Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Dated: 1997 Pages: 401-420
Date Published
1997
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This study first examined the official German police criminal statistics to determine the role of alcohol in the commitment of crimes; it then analyzed the relationship of alcohol abuse and chronic offenders in a life-course perspective.
Abstract
The Tuebingen Criminal Behaviour Development Study, begun in 1965, was conducted by an interdisciplinary team of criminologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, social workers, and lawyers. The core of the original Tuebingen longitudinal project was a comprehensive qualitative study of the life histories of 400 young men. The goal was to gain detailed and systematically structured experiential knowledge about pathways toward crime compared with pathways away from crime. Another part of the study was quantitative; personal and other sociobiographical data were collected according to the usual standards of empirical social research; however, the data collection was not completely theory driven, as it was considered to be only an "additional" source of gaining knowledge about the subjects' personality, their close surroundings, their larger environment, significant biographical issues or life events, and predominant patterns of behaving and/or styles of living. The follow-up study started in 1987 and lasted to the end of 1995. The study found that the more a person is involved in crime, the more he is consuming alcohol; however, neither early experiences of socialization nor imprisonment experiences are sufficient causal conditions for a heavy alcohol consumption in later life. The analyses indicate that alcohol abuse is an expression of the typical behavioral patterns and daily routine of criminals. Delinquency, alcohol consumption, and a deviant lifestyle seem to interact and to enhance each other in the sense of an increasing spiral that leads to a decrease in opportunities for developing and maintaining a normal, socially integrated biography. Nevertheless, heavy drinking in the past does not prohibit processes of desistance, but desistance from crime must accompany desistance from heavy drinking. 7 tables, 4 figures, and 15 references