Youth who are incarcerated in secure detention and commitment settings display a complex array of educational, behavioral, and mental health issues that affect the services they require, as well as their responsiveness to interventions. Yet, seldom are these needs understood or taken into account when providing services in secure care settings. In…

The majority of youths involved with the juvenile justice system struggle to make academic progress. This article reviews the characteristics of youths in these settings and highlights evidence-based instructional practices that are effective with struggling students, as well as practices that have been documented as successful in secure…

The pathways through services for offenders with intellectual disability were reviewed. Participants were 197 offenders with intellectual disability accepted into three types of community and three types of secure forensic intellectual disability services. They were first compared with 280 participants referred but not accepted into services and…

Objectives: Approximately 25% of women are pregnant or postpartum when they enter prison. This study assesses a system-level intervention that prevented the separation of mothers and infants at birth, allowing them to reside together in an alternative community setting. Method: Longitudinal analysis of several state-level administrative databases…

The number of women under community-based criminal justice supervision in the U.S. has reached an all-time high. Because of this, there is an increased need for programs meant to address the unique needs of reentry women. In this article we examine a sample of 155 such programs to determine whether currently available reentry programs in the 10…

This study quantified the influence of visual Attention Therapy (AT) on reading skills and Coherent Motion Threshold (CMT) in adjudicated teens with moderate reading disabilities (RD) residing in a residential alternative sentencing program. Forty-two students with below-average reading scores were identified using standardized reading…

The current study is a national survey of special education mathematics teachers in juvenile correctional schools (JC). Results are based on 121 (32%) returned surveys from special education mathematics teacher. Results indicated that in 47% of schools, curriculum was not based on district or state curricula. Between 40-50% of teachers reported…

This article investigates the relation between history of intrafamilial violence and self-regulatory capacity, cognitive processing, and mental health adjustment in incarcerated adolescents. Adolescents were incarcerated at the time of the study for various violent offenses, ranging from persistent delinquency to sexual assault (n = 115). A model…

Inpatients involuntarily committed to a chemical dependency unit and exhibiting a co-occurring depressive disorder received either individual sessions of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) or treatment as usual (TAU) within the context of an ongoing 12-step program. Results indicated significant, but equivalent, reductions in levels of…

Although the literature clearly demonstrates that repeated readings result in immediate effects on students' performance on the intervention materials as well as long-term benefits, data are less promising regarding its immediate generalization effects to similar materials. Using an alternating treatments design, the current study evaluated the…

Evidence strongly supports the notion that juvenile offenders, both with and without disabilities, are significantly more likely to experience successful reentry into their home schools and communities if appropriate programs and supports are in place. In spite of this, comprehensive state-level reentry programs for youth are few and far between.…

With the highest incarceration rate in the world, the United States has set an inauspicious precedent. More than 1.7 million American children--one in every 43--have a parent in jail or prison. The generational effects of incarceration are deep and lasting and include vastly increased risks of criminal justice involvement among the children of…

One of the greatest challenges for the juvenile justice system is to successfully reintegrate young offenders back to their communities so that they do not re-offend and return to detention. This challenge is even greater for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth who are over-represented in the Queensland juvenile justice system in…

Prisons play a significant role in contributing to the lifelong learning needs of their inmates who often have limited formal education and skills. The main function of correctional centres, among others, is the secure containment of inmates committed to their custody, and provision of skills and training in an effort to help them integrate more…

Although large epidemiological data sets can inform research on the etiology and development of borderline personality disorder (BPD), they rarely include BPD measures. In some cases, however, proxy measures can be constructed using instruments already in these data sets. In this study, the authors developed and validated a self-report measure of…