The decision to remove the recurrent legal problems criterion was informed by studies showing that its prevalence is much lower than that of the other criteria and that it had poor psychometric properties (i.e., low discrimination values, high severity and low factor loadings) (Mewton et al., 2010; Hasin et al., 2012). It has also been argued that legal problems may not be a valid measure of SUD, are heavily influenced by chance, and are not necessarily a clinical indicator (Proctor et al., 2012).
