Acute effects of alcohol and chronic alcohol addiction as a determinant ofviolent crime

To study the influence of alcohol and psychosocial variables on delinquent behavior, we coded data from the psychiatric evaluation of 254 defendants u sing a standardized score sheet, analyzing correlations between acute intox ication at the time of the crime (ICD 10:F10.0), diagnosis of alcohol depen dency according to ICD 10 (F10.2), psychobiographical variables, criminal h istory, and parameters relating to the index offence. We found that 64.6% o f all defendants studied were intoxicated when committing the crime and 25. 6% suffered from alcohol dependency. Alcohol intoxication correlated to occ urrence of violent crime, cruelty in committing the index offence, and earl ier convictions. Logistic regression, with demographic and psychosocial var iables entered as covariables, revealed acute alcohol intoxication but not alcohol dependency as a predictor of violent crime (odds ratio 2.3, P=0.02) . Alcohol intoxication and dependency were also independent predictors of e arlier convictions (intoxication,odds ratio 4.4, P=0.0001;dependency, odds ratio 3.6, P=0.003). Our findings support the hypothesis that acute alcohol intoxication, not dependency, influences violent crime in a direct manner. However, alcohol dependency predicts criminal recidivism.