Alcohol and Crime: Behavioral Aspects

Alcohol can be involved in crime in two ways: laws regulating its use or distribution can be violated, and its effects might generate behavior that violates other laws (Collins, 1991). (People may also commit crimes to obtain money for alcohol, but because alcohol is relatively inexpensive, this phenomenon does not occur as often as it does among drug users.) In the United States, alcohol-specific crimes include drunken driving, public drunkenness, underage drinking, and illicit production of alcohol. The present discussion is concerned with alcohol's role in nonalcohol-specific crimes. Most of the analyses on alcohol crime use one of three methods, with a focus either on criminal events, on people who commit crimes, or on populations with different alcohol policies and drinking patterns.