Drug and Alcohol Dependence, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIH 19 (1987) 313-324 Elsevier Scientific Publishers Ireland Ltd. 313 zyxwvutsrq ALCOHOL USE BY VIOLENT AND PROPERTY OFFENDERS* JOHN W . W ELTE and BRENDA A . M ILLER Research fnetitute on Alcoholism, New York State Division of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, 1021 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14203 (U.S.A.) (Received January 29th, 1987) SUMMARY Offenders incarcerated for violent and property crimes were compared with respect to their alcohol and drug use, both chronic and immediately before their crime. There were only slight differences between the groups. The proportions of violent offenders who drank before the crime were greater than the proportion of property offenders, but this was not true for offenders with low education, The disinhibition theory of alcohol involvement in violent crime was not supported. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWV Key words: Alcohol use - Violent crime - Property crime INTRODUCTION It is both conventional and academic wisdom that alcohol use and violent crime are linked. In his foreword to Drinking and Crime [ 11, Marvin Wolf- gang wrote, ‘Crimes of cunning, stealth, or numerical complexity, like many white-collar crimes, are most unlikely to be performed efficiently under a heavy influence of alcohol, but crimes passionels, it has been asserted are often the culmination of excessive drinking’. Pernanen [2] focused on violent crime because of his belief that the alcohol-crime link is best ana- lyzed by reference to the theory of aggressive behavior, and that the study of the relationship between drinking and crime in general is of negligible theoretical relevance. Lang [ 31 reviewed the psychological literature linking *The data utilized in this article were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (Ann Arbor, Michigan). The data for the surveys were originally collected by the Bureau of Census for the Principal Investigator, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Neither the original collectors of the data nor the Consortium bear any responsibility for the data analysis or interpretations presented here. 03788716/87/$03.50 0 1987 Elsevier Scientific Publishers Ireland Ltd. Printed and Published in Ireland