Crime is one of the serious outcomes of substance use disorders (SUD) and it is clear that youth with some types of behavioral and emotional problems (particularly problems with self-regulation) are at increased risk of both early onset SUD and crime (Copeland, Miller-Johnson, Keeler, Angold, & Costello, 2007; Sung, Erkanli, Angold, & Costello, 2004). In some youth both criminality and SUD tend to be adolescence limited problems, while others persist in one or both into adulthood. We have already mapped North Carolina criminal arrest data to age 21 onto two longitudinal, population-based studies of developmental psychopathology.

The goal of this project is to examine the role of SUD in persistent versus adolescence-limited criminality, to clarify mechanisms that link early substance use and persistent use with later violence, and also to test at individual, family, and community factors that might moderate these links. The project builds on two NIH-funded studies in North Carolina, the Great Smoky Mountain Study (GSMS; Jane Costello PI; 8804 assessments of 1420 subjects aged 9-21) and the Caring for Children in the Community (CCC; Adrian Angold PI; 1627 assessments of 921 subjects aged 9-17). Both studies include White, African-American, and American Indian subjects. Identical assessment measures of substance-related outcomes as well as individual, family and community functioning facilitate parallel analyses.

This project involves three steps : 1) conducting systematic searches of the public access database of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts to collect criminal histories on the 1420 (GSMS) subjects and 920 (CCC) subjects; 2) parsing records, data cleaning, linking criminal records with subject information, and coding of offenses; and 3) data analysis and manuscript preparation.

Step 1: As of 4/1/10, searches had been conducted on 100% (1023 of 1420) (GSMS) subjects and 76.6% (705 of 920 CCC) subjects.  The protocol has IRB approval under an ongoing IRB protocol in the Duke Medical Center. For each subject, redundant searches are conducted by two research assistants to insure reliability.  All criminal offenses from records harvested to date had been coded according to type (e.g., property, person, drug-related) and severity of offense (mild to severe on five-point scale).  All GSMS searches were completed by the end of January and CCC searches were completed end of April 2010.

Step 2: For GSMS subjects a database manager, Gordon Keeler, has parsed records, removed duplicate records, linking criminal records with subject information, and coded offenses by type and severity.  The GSMS data is ready for analysis.

Step 3: A graduate student, Dmitri Putilin, was hired to assist in literature review and analysis of the crime data.