Delinquency and alcohol use among adolescents in Europe: The role of cultural contexts

Abstract

This paper presents cross-cultural research using data from the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2) to evaluate the strength and characteristics of the relationship between different kinds of juvenile delinquency and alcohol use, and to investigate whether, and how, different drinking cultures may influence this relationship. The setting is a school-based survey with a self-report questionnaire in a sample of 7th, 8th and 9th grade students (comprising 12–16 year olds) from 25 European countries. After recording data on alcohol consumption among young people in different European countries, we assessed the degree to which property offences, violent offences and gang membership were associated with the use of alcohol. In addition, a multilevel analysis (MLA) was carried out to ascertain whether the association between delinquency and alcohol use was influenced by variations in drinking cultures. Different drinking patterns were observed in Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean countries. Alcohol consumption was more closely related to involvement in violent crimes than to property offences, and correlated with the frequency and seriousness of delinquent behaviour everywhere. MLA showed that gang membership increased the probability of alcohol abuse to a greater degree in non-Mediterranean countries, while involvement in delinquency proved to be associated with alcohol abuse to a similar degree in the different cultural contexts considered. With regard to cultural influences on the relationships between juvenile delinquency and alcohol use, we ascertained that cultural attitudes towards alcohol influence the delinquency–alcohol relationship at the group level rather than the individual level.