Understanding the link between alcohol dependence and victimisation risk: Is risk explained by peers or alcohol behaviours?

These findings add knowledge about the mechanism of a link between early alcohol dependence and later violent victimisation among young offenders. They suggest that more focus on reducing delinquent peer association, or reducing its impact, is crucial to reducing further harms to these young people, in turn possibly affecting continuing substance use and reoffending risks. Peer mentoring programmes help to provide prosocial modelling and reduce deviant peer ties in some circumstances, and these findings suggest that the next step should be their evaluation specifically among justice-involved young people with alcohol dependence. Providing additional funding and/or opportunities for involvement in such mentoring programmes may help to reduce the public health and financial costs associated with alcohol dependence in the juvenile justice system.