Using the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program to further understand the relationship between drug use and gang membership

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the relationship between drug use and gang membership using data from the Arizona Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, which collects both self‐report and hard measures (i.e., urinalysis) of drug use. Our analyses revealed that self‐reported recent drug use (i.e., drug use in the past three days) and urinalysis outcomes were similarly associated with the gang‐membership variables. These findings suggest that self‐reported data obtained from gang members is a particularly robust method for gathering information on their recent behavior. Additionally, our results were supportive of the social facilitation model, showing that current gang members were significantly more likely to use marijuana and cocaine compared with former gang members. The implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program
• drug use
• gang membership

Acknowledgments

Paper presented at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Las Vegas, Nevada, March 2004. This research was funded in part by a grant from the Motorola Great Communities Grants Program and the National Institute of Justice. The opinions expressed in the manuscript are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of Motorola Corporation or the National Institute of Justice. We would like to thank Donna Bishop and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Notes

Charles M. Katz is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Arizona State University West. His research interests include the police response to gangs, program evaluation, and organizational theory. Vincent J. Webb is a Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Arizona State University West. His research interests include program evaluation, community crime prevention, drugs and crime, and the police response to gangs. Scott H. Decker is Curators Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at UM‐St. Louis. Professor Decker's primary research areas include gangs, criminal justice policy, violence, and the offender's perspective. He is co‐author of Life in the Gang: Family, Friends and Violence (Cambridge University Press, 1996) a field‐based study of gang members, Armed Robbers in Action (Northeastern University Press, 1997), Confronting Gangs (Roxbury, 2002), Responding to Gangs (National Institute of Justice, 2002), and Policing Gangs and Youth Violence (Wadsworth, 2002). He is also the Research Partner for Project Safe Neighborhoods in the Eastern District of Missouri and the Southern District of Illinois. He has evaluated several major national and local police‐community gang initiatives and conducted extensive fieldwork with active gang members. Correspondence to: Charles M. Katz, Criminal Justice and Criminology, Arizona State University West, 4701 W. Thunderbird Rd., Glendale, AZ 85306‐4908, USA. E‐mail: [email protected]

For a comprehensive review of the self‐report method, see Thornberry and Krohn (2000) and Junger‐Tas and Marshall (1999).

Although we assume most drug offenses are for possession and paraphernalia, given that most of the samples used were juveniles, we were unable to determine this from the publications. As one reviewer pointed out, there are most likely drug sales charges commingled with possession and paraphernalia charges resulting in a lack of specificity for this measure.

For exception, see Katz et al. (2000).

Although some researchers claim that self‐report data obtained from chronic offenders is unreliable and invalid (e.g., Simon, 1999), other researchers claim that it is significantly better than official data (Farrington et al., 2003). It is not the purpose of this paper to specifically address this debate, as in many respects these are two separate issues. We include this literature because it provides important context for this manuscript.

We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this issue out to us.

Thornberry et al. (1993) yielded similar findings in support of the facilitation model, albeit with a less complete data set. These authors would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out the comparative strengths and weaknesses of Thornberry et al. (1993) and Thornberry et al. (2003).

For further discussion on the normative and group processes that have been shown to influence delinquency and drug use within gangs, see Decker (1996).

For further reading on the nature and extent of Arizona's gang problem, see Zatz (1987), Zatz and Portillos (2000), Katz, Webb, and Schafer (2000), Katz, Webb, and Armstrong (2003), and Katz and Webb (2004).

As of January 2004, ADAM operations have been suspended due to federal spending constraints.

These two sites were selected because they were the only two that used the ADAM Gang Addendum.

Individuals 17 years old and younger are legally considered juveniles in Arizona.

The lifetime drug use variables were excluded from this manuscript at the suggestion of a reviewer. Readers interested in our findings related to self‐reported lifetime drug use should contact the lead author.

For the purpose of this study, we did not examine amphetamine use because the urine tests used for portions of this study did not use confirmatory urine tests to differentiate between over‐the‐counter stimulants (e.g., cold medicine) and illegal substances (methamphetamine, amphetamine).

Because we were examining the relationship between gang status and drug use, we did not further restrict our gang sample to individuals who self‐reported delinquency. As noted by Curry, Decker, and Egley (2002), this “measurement strategy avoided the potential tautology of establishing the relationship between membership and delinquency [and drug use] in our operational definition” (p. 281).

As part of the NIJ gang addendum pilot project, Phoenix gang addendum data were collected in 1999, 2000, and 2002; in Tucson they were collected in 1999 and 2000. In Mesa, data were collected in 2003 as part of a Motorola Corporation‐funded study to examine the scope and nature of the gang problem in Mesa, Arizona.

Phoenix, Tucson, and Mesa represent the three largest cities in the state of Arizona, and, as a result, the three booking facilities used to collect the sample serve as the primary booking faculties not only for juvenile arrestees in Maricopa County and Pima County, but also for the state.

Violent offenses included the following charges: assault, kidnapping, robbery, rape, sexual assault, weapons, domestic violent, other assault, and other crimes against persons. Property offenses included the following charges: arson, burglary, burglary tools, damage/destroy property, forgery, fraud, larceny/theft, stolen property, stolen vehicle, and trespassing. Drug use and sales offenses included the following charges: drug possession, drug sale, other drug offense. Status offenses included the following charges: curfew violation, runaway, truancy, minor in possession of alcohol, tobacco, or inhalants. Other offenses included the following charges: DUI, prostitution, flight/escape/warrant, obscenity, resisting arrest, other, public peace, unspecified ROR violation, driving offense, and warrant.

For an exception, see Thornberry et al. (2003).

Examining the validity of self‐reported drug use was not the major focus of this paper. However, this issue was explored in further analysis, which offered additional support for the validity of self‐reported drug use among gang members. The most important finding was that the rates of disclosure of recent marijuana and cocaine use did not vary significantly across levels of gang membership. We believe that such findings have profound implications for gang researchers using the self‐report method.