Adjudicated youth face tentative futures upon release from secure care settings. Their fate is often dependent upon the existence of quality aftercare programs emphasizing effective, integrated transition services to help them reintegrate successfully. The goal in developing transition plans for youth exiting detention is to reduce the likelihood…

This article explains and analyzes the practical application of the Socratic method in the context of inmate education, and identifies core critical thinking elements that emerge from four transcribed Socratic discussions with prison inmates. The paper starts with a detailed examination of the stages of the Socratic method as practiced by the…

The compulsion and capacity for self-expression in penal institutions can be witnessed through the endless production of such creations as wall murals, graffiti, effigies, adornments, decorative envelopes, and tattoos. The intent of this paper is to examine the self-directed expressive endeavors of male residents at a county jail. The examples…

The authors used model-based cluster analysis to identify subtypes of criminal psychopaths on the basis of differences in personality structure. Participants included 96 male prisoners diagnosed as psychopathic, using the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991). Personality was assessed using the brief form of the Multidimensional…

The outrage over revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison has faded from public discourse, but a number of questions remain unanswered. This paper criticizes official rationalizations offered for the abuse. We make the case that these abuses are systemic, resulting from dehumanization of the enemy and the long reliance on and…

Prison suicide rates are increasing. The impact of witnessing a suicide or how many people do so is unknown. The aim of this study was to find how many young people detained in a Young Offenders' Institution (YOI) have had contact with another's suicide attempt and to test for association between this and own self-harming behaviour. A…

This article presents an interview with poet Helen Frost. Frost talked about how poetry can help at-risk children. She also related the challenges she faced when she wrote her latest book titled "The Braid."

This article looks at two modern institutions designed to discipline and control urban bodies--the school and the asylum--and the records they produced and the young people whose moral and cognitive capacities they tended. Both institutions are the sites of past childhood stories, yet the lives experienced in them are essentially anonymous. The…

A close review of prison violence makes it obvious that a disproportionate amount of such violence is related to the mental health problems of prisoners, and that, in the U.S. at least, this appears to have become increasingly the case. One reason for the trend is that prison administrators have been routinely relegating disturbed disruptive…

Studies indicate that the impact of family involvement may be the most important predictor of successful psychiatric hospitalization of adolescents. Yet the ability to engage both an adolescent and his or her family in family therapy in the context of what is often an involuntary hospitalization is a major challenge. A number of promising…

Evaluated impact of motivational enhancement (ME) of substance abuse treatment compared to relaxation training (RT) on sex without condoms (overall and involving substance use) 3 months following release among incarcerated adolescents. This randomized clinical trial involved 114 incarcerated adolescents from the Northeast. Regression analyses…

Of the 4000 women and girls in custody in England and Wales, an unknown proportion will have a learning disability. Most research on the plight of offenders or accused persons with a learning disability has focussed on men because women form a small proportion of the prison population, and women with learning disabilities are an even smaller…

Research on the safety and victimization of older prisoners has been limited. This study examines quantitative and qualitative victimization data gathered from face-to-face interviews with 65 male prisoners (ages 50 and above) confined in a state-level prison system. Both victimization rates and narrative descriptions of psychological, property,…

Through fieldwork and in-depth interviews examining the careers of adolescent girls in the juvenile justice system, this article reveals some of the interaction processes by which challenges to parental authority may facilitate contact, entry, and movement through the system. Parents or guardians act as informal agents of control until a breakdown…

This study recruited 559 youths from detention centers (mean age was 15.4 years; 50.1% of detainees were girls) to investigate pathways that link witnessing community violence in the 12 months before detainment to drug and sexual risk behaviors in the two months preceding detainment. Through the use of audio-computer-assisted technology, data were…