Conversation with many juvenile children residing at observation Homes exemplifies how their past haunts them and at times is a major source of them feeling unequipped to survive in the world outside the barriers of the government Home boundaries. This lack of self-confidence may also demotivate the child from returning to formal education at a…

This article describes a music program in a prison where two preservice music education majors conduct a choir of the inmates. The mission of the choir, framed in the context of social justice, is to move beyond barriers to create communities of hope that restore, enlighten, and transform lives through music. It is an outlet for the inmates to…

Research has linked the role of education to delinquency, but much of the focus has been on general population samples and with little attention to demographic differences. Employing a cumulative disadvantage framework that integrates elements of informal social control and labeling theories, this article examines whether academic achievement…

A large proportion of youth in the juvenile justice system have disabilities (U.S. Department of Education, 2014). Research indicates that the prevalence of youth with disabilities in these settings is four to five times greater than the prevalence of youth with disabilities in public schools. Juvenile justice facilities often face challenges for…

The psychometric structure of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18; Derogatis, 2001) was investigated using Mokken scaling and parametric item response theory. Data of 487 outpatients, 266 students, and 207 prisoners were analyzed. Results of the Mokken analysis indicated that the BSI-18 formed a strong Mokken scale for outpatients and…

Three adult male sex offenders with developmental disabilities participated in phallometric assessments that involved repeated measures of arousal when exposed to various stimuli. Arousal assessment outcomes were similar to those obtained by Reyes et al. (2006). Additional data-analysis methods provided further information about sexual…

Although not originally designed for implementation in correctional settings, researchers and clinicians have begun to use the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) to assess offenders. A relatively small number of studies have made attempts to validate the alcohol and drug abuse scales of the PAI, and only a very few studies have validated those…

This research examines the sentencing outcomes of convicted child sexual offenders from data collected over an eight year period. Multiple regression and nominal log linear regression are used to examine length of prison sentence, length of probation sentence, and whether the convicted offender is actually sent to prison or to probation. While…

The present study examines the associations between coping efforts and psychological (internalizing and externalizing symptoms) and behavioral adjustment in a sample of 373 male juvenile offenders (ages 14-17) during the first month of incarceration. Social support seeking was associated with a more rapid decline in internalizing symptoms and…

The possibility of combining indicators to improve recidivism prediction was evaluated in a sample of released federal prisoners randomly divided into a derivation subsample (n = 550) and a cross-validation subsample (n = 551). Five incrementally valid indicators were selected from five domains: demographic (age), historical (prior convictions),…

This article utilizes a qualitative case study to explore juvenile justice personnel perspectives on school reentry. Juvenile justice personnel are a little tapped into source of information on the inner workings of the school-to-prison pipeline. They provide a unique perspective as firsthand observers of the pipeline, offering a different voice…

Virtually every study of the impact of college on incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people demonstrates a positive effect on income, civic engagement, family, and personal health, as well as dramatically reduced recidivism rates. College in and after prison offers a singularly effective strategy for redeveloping individuals, families and…

This bulletin is part of the "Juvenile Offenders and Victims National Report Series." The "National Report" offers a comprehensive statistical overview of the problems of juvenile crime, violence, and victimization and the response of the juvenile justice system. During each interim year, the bulletins in the "National…

Although there has been an increase in research on sex offenders' modus operandi, geographic decision making, and hunting behavior, most studies still tend to emphasize criminal motivation while overlooking the role of situational and environmental factors. Studies of mixed samples of rapists and child molesters typically neglect to conduct…

The "Delinquency Reduction Outcome Profile" ("DROP") is a novel situational-judgment test (SJT) designed to measure social decision making in delinquent youth. The DROP includes both a typical SJT scoring method, which captures the deviation of an individual response from an "ideal" expert-based response pattern, as well as a novel…