Illegal Activity Patterns and Substance Use Among Asian Americans in the Criminal Justice System

Despite being the fastest growing immigrant group in the U.S. and also becoming a visible population in the criminal justice system, research on adult Asian-American community dwelling offenders about their patterns of corrections involvement and substance use has been very limited. This study aims to address this gap in knowledge, and to better inform the efforts of researchers and practitioners advocating for the well-being of this hidden population.

Directories of county listed supervisees provided by Parole/Probation Officers, the courts, community agency referral, and local newspaper listings were utilized to recruit study participants. Face-to-face interviews were conducted for 192 participants who were currently or recently supervised in two counties in Oregon (118 Whites, 40 Asian-Americans, 34 other non-Whites; 58% were males). Corrections involvement was assessed by both archival-record and self-report. Substance use was assessed by self-report, staff ratings, and from saliva specimens. Differences between the three sample groups were tested.

Asian Americans reported higher education levels, but fewer hours employed and accessed fewer social services than the other groups.  Archival-records indicated that Asian-Americans: (1) compared to Whites and other non-Whites--in separate analyses, had higher arrest counts and convictions for juvenile charges and court actions; and higher rates of incarceration; (2) compared to Whites, Asian Americans had fewer contempt of court citations, yet higher A and B felony charges; (3) compared to other non-Whites, Asian Americans had fewer arrests for family violence, but higher traffic related arrests and convictions; however, these differences were not significant with Whites. Self-reported lifetime arrest counts were higher among other non-Whites than all other participants; this difference was non-significant between Whites and Asian-Americans. Fourteen (35%) Asian Americans reported alcohol as their favorite and most used substance followed by marijuana (28%), cocaine and speed/meth (8% each). There were no between-groups differences in self-reported amounts and patterns of substance use including alcohol, but Asian-Americans were convicted less often for alcohol use than all other participants.

National data sets indicate that Asian-American involvement in the criminal justice system is lower than other racial/ethnic groups. This study found that once in the system, however, their characteristics were often similar to or poorer than other Americans of color—who are known to fare poorly within the corrections system. Study findings provide unique insights which forensic researchers and practitioners may utilize with Asian-American offenders. Generalizability from study findings is limited due to the non-nationally representative sample.