Youth crime makes up only a small percentage of the overall crime rate. In order to demonstrate the correlation between substance abuse and youth crime, I will examine: the frequency of drug and alcohol use and crime (both self-reported by members of the general population and when an arrest occurs for a particular crime), the seriousness of crimes, the type of drugs used, possible explanations for the correlation between crime and drug use, and the presence of drug and alcohol abuse and crime among street youths. However, alcohol use is significantly related to crime.