The within-individual lagged effects of time spent incarcerated on substance use: a nationally representative longitudinal study from the United States

ABSTRACT

Background

The effects of incarceration on future substance use is well documented in the extant literature. Nevertheless, scholars have yet to examine the within-individual correspondence between the change in months incarcerated over time and the change in substance use over time.

Aim

Considering this gap in the literature, the purpose of the current study is to evaluate whether within-individual changes in months incarcerated is associated with subsequent within-individual changes in substance use.

Method

The current study examines the influence of the change in the number months incarcerated (2004–2009) on alcohol, cigarette, marijuana, and hard drug use (2005–2010) using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). The within-individual effects were estimated using four lagged latent growth models.

Result

The results demonstrated that within-individual change in the months spent incarcerated influenced the change in the likelihood of substance use over time. Within-individual increases in the number of months an individual spent incarcerated over time (2004–2009) was associated with within-individual decreases in the frequency of cigarette and marijuana use, but within-individual increases in the likelihood of hard drug use from 2005 to 2010.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that contemporary treatment modalities might not be effective for individuals with a history of using hard drugs.

KEYWORDS:

• Incarceration
• months incarcerated
• substance use

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank James Kelsay and Jamie Newsome for reading an earlier draft of the manuscript. The author would also like to thank the NLSY97 research team. I am grateful for their support, and any errors or omissions are ours alone. The NLSY97 survey is sponsored and directed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and managed by the Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR) at The Ohio State University. Interviews are conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. The current study did not receive any support from these grants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.