L’apport du capital social, familial, personnel et délinquant à l’explication
de la relation entre alcool, drogues et violence chez les jeunes
The topic of this study joins the wider frame of the works led by the research group Drug, Alcohol and Violence International (DAVI) which tries to clarify the nature of the links between alcohol, drugs and violence amongst the youth (students, dropouts, offenders) from Montreal, Toronto, Philadelphia and Amsterdam. The study investigates more specifically the dimensions of social, family, individual and delinquent capital as being possible ways to explain the relationship between alcohol and drug consumption and the demonstration of violence amongst the youth from Montreal frequenting a high school environment. To do so, we pursue three specific research objectives: 1) to determine, through a review of the litterature, the modalities of the social, family, individual and delinquent capital; 2) to empirically encircle in our data, which modalities can be used to account for the contribution of social, family, individual and delinquent capital in the explanation of the relationship between alcohol/drugs and violence amongst the youth; and 3) to verify if the studied dimensions influence a) the consumption of alcohol and drugs amongst the youth; b) the emergence of delinquent behaviour and more specially violent behaviour, and c) the relationship between alcohol, drugs and violence amongst the youth frequenting Montreal high schools. Our random sample consists of 995 respondents (boys and girls) from eight French-speaking and two English-speaking schools from both the public and private sectors and from privileged and underprivileged environments in the cities of Montreal, Laval and Longueuil, also called the Greater Montréal. Participants had to answer a questionnaire consisting of 138 questions, the great majority of which were closed. The sociodemographic data characterizing the youths and their environment, their relationships with their families, their friends, their school, their district, their alcohol and drugs consumption, the existence in their life of violent behaviour (being the aggressor or the victim), the demonstration of criminal gestures or behavioural disorders are the main dimensions of their life sounded by the questionnaire.  From the outset, let us specify that regardless of the substance, very few students use them in a problematic fashion and that no inclination to crime was noted in the majority of our sample. In fact, our analysis brings us to conclude the existence of statistically significant relationships between the consumption of alcohol, marijuana and hard drugs and the inclination to crime and behavioural disorders, these relations being of variable strengths, going from moderate to strong. However, it is necessary to note that these relations touch only a small portion of high school students participating in the study, as was observed in other studies. More specifically, family capital appears to influence only marijuana consumption. So, the less parental supervision is present, the more marijuana consumption increases. We notice that individual capital produces a more important impact on alcohol, marijuana and hard drug consumption, on behavioural disorders and on the inclination to crime. So, as individual capital is negatively affected, the more the consumption of alcohol, marijuana and hard drugs as well as the inclination to behavioural disorders and crime will be important.  The share capital, better explains the consumption of marijuana than that of the alcohol and hard drugs or better still, the demonstration of behavioural disorders and the inclination to crime. Finally, the delinquent capital appears to influence alcohol, marijuana and hard drugs consumption. Its influence is felt also, to a lesser proportion, on the demonstration of behavioural disorders and the inclination to crime.  To our surprise, the dimension of family capital which is particularly influential in scientific papers does not stand out in our analyses as we had envisioned it. We attribute this to the limits of the data bank used which was established for purposes other than those aimed in our study, and in which factors connected to family capital were not all present. There is no doubt that the consumption of psychoactive substances and the inclination to behavioural disorders and to crime are found amongst the youth. The explanatory models, generally used to explain deviant behaviours, do not produce convincing results for high school students, a population of young people rarely studied in this respect. The model at the heart of our analyses which puts to contribution the dimensions of share, family, individual and delinquent capital seems promising, especially with regards to delinquent capital, and this, in spite of the limits imposed by our data bank. In light of the results, it seems that the incidence of the concurrence of the consumption of psychoactive substances and the inclination to behavioural disorders and to the crime is multifactorial. The main contributory factors are those of the delinquent capital for the consumption of alcohol, marijuana and hard drugs as well as the inclination to behavioural disorders and to crime which are better explained by the component factors of the individual capital. We consider that the combination of the dimensions of family, individual, social and individual capital constitutes a way of explaining the relation alcohol / drug and violence amongst the youth. It appears to us that a data collection instrument specifically designed to investigate the explanatory potential should be at the basis of the next research.
relation drogue-crime youth alcohol drug alcohol-drug relationship delinquency social capital familial capital individual capital delinquent capital