The Effects of Substance Use on Violence

The current study will use criminal justice data and extend current criminal justice explanatory models from simple causal or additive models to include interaction/moderation effects of substance use’s unique effect on violence. The focus is on criminal offenders because they represent those who are the most frequently and severely violent people in the population. Further, criminal justice data has the sample sizes necessary to use modern statistical techniques to identify the unique effects of substance use “controlling for other variables” (i.e., interaction/moderation effects), using a wide range of covariates. The current study will utilize decision tree analyses in order to statistically test for interaction/moderation effects. Further, the current study will separate substances used into four discrete categories: alcohol, marijuana, central nervous system (CNS) stimulants, and opiates.