ABSTRACT
Multiple terms denote the twists and turns that mark the life course of youth as they move from risk to resilience or maladjustment. From Rutter (1987), we have vulnerabilities and protective factors that denote mechanisms turning these adaptive trajectories away from or toward resilience, respectively. Among those youth who may not start from a clear point of risk, however, evidence of psychopathology clearly indicates the potential for turning points to lead away from an expected course of healthy adjustment. Within the study of antisocial behavior, theoretical writings and empirical studies recognized these mechanisms as influencing trajectories of problem behaviors. The concept of snares, offered by Moffitt (1993), fills a unique niche in this literature and refers to those mechanisms responsible for prolonging what might otherwise be a developmentally normative pattern of desisting antisocial behavior. Snares thus define a turning point away from an expected course of adaptation. Given the pattern of desistance that typifies the course of antisocial behavior in young adulthood, factors that serve to prolong antisocial behavior during this developmental period inform our search for ensnaring mechanisms. The current chapter examines the role of a potential snare, substance abuse, in interfering with the normative pattern of desistance from antisocial behavior during young adulthood *
