Most arrests among girls are attributable to status offenses and property crimes; however, the number of girls arrested for assault and other violent crimes is increasing. Although arrest patterns among girls may be changing, the way the system responds has not. Correctional programs have almost always been designed with the male offender in…

The face-to-face confrontation involved in the crime of robbery renders vast amounts of financial, physical, and psychological injury in the United States. This study developed hypotheses from existing literature regarding salient situational factors associated with the prevalence of overt physical coercion during commercial and street robberies.…

Women represent a relatively small percentage of known violent offenders, a disproportionality in offending that increases as the severity of the crime increases. The exception is intimate partner homicide where some studies find U.S. rates of offending by women approach those of men. Although the literature makes clear that significant gender…

Criminologists have long been interested in understanding why people commit crime. Perhaps an even more interesting question is what accounts for the offending of individuals who occupy white-collar positions. Most explanations of white-collar offending have relied on extant criminological theories that have been developed to account for street or…

This article examines the relationship between gun possession and the nature of an offender's involvement in drug markets. The analyses are based on data obtained from drug offenders who participated in the 1997 Survey of Inmates of State and Federal Correctional Facilities. The authors find that participants in crack-cocaine markets are more…

This study uses geospatial and regression analyses to examine the relationships among social disorganization, collective efficacy, social control, residence restrictions, spatial autocorrelation, and the neighborhood distribution of registered sex offenders (RSOs) in Chicago. RSOs were concentrated in neighborhoods that had higher levels of social…

Although aftercare programs have been gaining popularity as a mechanism for helping offenders readjust to society, evaluations of their success remain varied. This is most likely due to the diversity of programs labeled as aftercare and the inability of research to isolate specific program components. The current study capitalizes on a natural…

Circumstances under which a sexual assault takes place and how these circumstances affect offenders' reactions to victim resistance are not well understood. Previous studies have not thoroughly examined the interactions that take place between situational factors and resistance. Using a combination of logistic regression and Chi-square Automatic…

Although prisoner reentry has taken center stage in correctional research and policy discussions, there has been little emphasis on reentry among jail populations. This paper examines a jail-based reentry program in New York City that begins while individuals are incarcerated and includes 90 days of postrelease services. This article explores…

Much of the knowledge base on offense specialization indicates that, although there is some (short-term) specialization, it exists amidst much versatility in offending. Yet this general conclusion is drawn on studies using very different conceptualizations of specialization and emerges with data primarily through the first two to three decades of…

Sex offender management is one of the highest-profile issues in public safety today. Although states have enacted community notification laws as a means to protect communities from sexual offending, limited research has been conducted to examine the impact of these laws on public safety. As such, this study used a quasi-experimental design to…

Numerous studies have examined the postrelease behaviors of men and women, highlighting the importance of social bonds in understanding positive reentry. However, there is evidence that the effect of social bonds on recidivism may vary by gender. Furthermore, research suggests that an individual's propensity for criminality, including prior…

During the past 30 years, U.S. poverty has remained high despite overall economic growth. At the same time, incarceration rates have risen by more than 300%, a phenomenon that many analysts have referred to as mass incarceration. This article explores whether the mass incarceration of the past few decades impeded progress toward poverty reduction.…

Therapeutic communities have become increasingly popular among correctional agencies with drug-involved offenders. This quasi-experimental study followed a group of inmates who participated in a prison-based therapeutic community in a California state prison, with a comparison group of matched offenders, for more than 5 years after their initial…

On March 1, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the execution of offenders under the age of 18 at the time of their criminal offense was unconstitutional. Although many welcomed this decision, some individuals still remain concerned that the elimination of the specter of capital punishment will inevitably increase homicidal behavior among…