We examined two hypotheses about the developmental relation between
substance abuse and individual differences in desistance from
antisocial behavior during young adulthood. The “snares”
hypothesis posits that substance abuse should result in time-specific
elevations in antisocial behavior relative to an individual's own
developmental trajectory of antisocial behavior, whereas the
“launch” hypothesis posits that substance abuse early in
young adulthood slows an individual's overall pattern of crime
desistance relative to the population norm during this developmental
period. We conducted latent trajectory analyses to test these
hypotheses using interview data about antisocial behaviors and
substance abuse assessed at ages 18, 21, and 26 in men from the Dunedin
Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (N = 461). We
found significant individual variability in initial levels and rates of
change in antisocial behavior over time as well as support for both the
snares hypothesis and the launch hypothesis as explanations for the
developmental relation between substance abuse and crime desistance in
young men.We thank the Dunedin Study
members, Dunedin Unit Director Richie Poulton, Unit research staff, and
Study founder Phil Silva. Research assistance was provided by HonaLee
Harrington. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development
Research Unit is supported by the New Zealand Health Research Council.
We also thank Alex Piquero for his helpful comments. This research
received support from the NIDA (Grant DA15398 and DA13148), NIMH
(Grants MH45070 and MH49414), William T. Grant Foundation, and Air New
Zealand.