This article describes a mental health evidence based practice, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT). While ACT has scientific support, it has not been rigorously tested for persons with a severe mental illness and repeated forensic involvement. This article provides preliminary evidence that ACT is best suited for reentry into the mental health…

Executive functions in 100 incarcerated adolescent female offenders were examined using the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS). As hypothesized, mean scores for the sample were significantly lower than norms on measures of Planning and Successive Processing. Contrary to our hypothesis, the Attention mean did not differ significantly from the…

This article reports on the imprisonment of a Muslim former student on charges related to terrorism that has struck a chord among academics and public intellectuals. Syed Fahad Hashmi, a 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, is being held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, on multiple…

This article briefly describes the results of a study, funded in 2001 by The National Art Education Foundation, of arts education in juvenile correctional facilities in the United States. It summarizes the results of a national survey, and it presents the Northeastern Training School* and STUDIO 200* as a model for community-based arts…

Although the need for the development and provision of culturally appropriate rehabilitation programs for offenders is widely acknowledged, there is a lack of empirical data that can be used as a basis for the development of new programs. This article reports the findings of a comparison of indigenous and nonindigenous male prisoners on a range of…

Women offenders and their children represent a severely disadvantaged and marginalised population. For many children, the very risk factors that contributed to their own mother's incarceration are present in their current lives, creating an intergenerational vulnerability for poor outcomes. Providing an intensive individualised parenting…

Intended to be an instructive, yet sobering, introduction to the complex and disturbing nature of the juvenile justice system, this article details the "numbers," including selected percentages, ratios, and dollar amounts, that are relevant to developing a better understanding of the juvenile justice system. General statistics about juvenile and…

Studies identifying the mechanisms underlying the causes and consequences of antisocial behavior among female delinquents as they transit to adulthood are scarce and have important limitations: Most are based on official statistics, they typically are restricted to normative samples, and rarely do they gather prospective data from samples of…

This issue of "P/PV In Brief" provides updated data from the Ready4Work prisoner reentry initiative, with a focus on the prison crisis occurring in many cities and states. While much more research is needed to understand the true, long-term impact of prisoner reentry initiatives, outcomes from Ready4Work were extremely promising in terms of…

The article discusses the potential negative impact of parental incarceration on children. To better understand children of prisoners, the author advocates, it is necessary to understand the scope of the problem, the life circumstances facing the children and their parents at the time of incarceration, the impact of the incarceration on the…

This book of research readings provides clear evidence that adult prisoners and offenders who participate in vocational education and training (VET) during their sentence are less likely to re-offend. A reduction in recidivism represents significant cost savings to the community. The book highlights recent improvements in the delivery of VET for…

Using H. J. Eysenck's (1957,1967) theory of temperament, this study examined the relationship between drug preference, drug use, and personality among incarcerated inmates. Analysis indicated a general preference for marijuana and alcohol over 8 other commonly used drugs across different personality types. Theoretical and clinical implications are…

Improving the conditions under which incarcerated populations give "informed consent" is a desirable goal given prisoners' lack of autonomy; part of the Institutional Review Board's (IRB) procedures is the inclusion of representative voices from the prisoner population as a mechanism to reduce harms. The most recent review of the ethics of…

This exploratory study represents one of the first attachment investigations of Japanese children who have been institutionalized. Mental representation of attachment was assessed using George and Solomon's (1990, 1996, 2000) Attachment Doll Play Classification System of the Bretherton et al. (1990) doll play story stems. Participants were 32…

Suicide rates in prisons are high. Our aim was to investigate the contribution of imitative suicide to the prison suicide rate. We used Knox tests for space-time clustering in a case register of natural and self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales and model simulations to estimate the effect size. We found significant space-time…