Psychoactive substance use and crime: analysis of the relationship between age of onset and recidivism

Abstract

The entail between behavior transgressor and consumption of psychoactive substances has been studied in different investigations by the aim to establish a possible causal relation, without up to the date it has come near to definitive conclusions. The aim that we appear in this study is to know the age of beginning to the consumption of some substances, both legal and illegal, inside a penitentiary sample, dividing this one for the number of penitentiary income. There took part 157 prisoners of Villabona'sprision (Asturias), of ages that they include from the 19 at the age of 49, being only women 5,1 %. The number of income in prison has qualified in two groups: Primary (an alone entry in the jail) and recidivism (two ó more income). The analysis of survival realized by means of the procedure Kaplan-Meier, it offers significant differences in the age of beginning of the consumption in some of the considered substances, highlighting the importance of the precocious beginning in the consumption for the backslider prisoner population.

Keywords

• Prision
• psychoactive substances
• age
• recidivism
• crime.