The effect of legal and extralegal factors on felony sentence outcomes has been widely studied, typically using a total incarceration variable that defines sentence outcomes as incarceration or probation. Research conducted by Holleran and Spohn has called this into question, revealing that factors that affected jail sentences were different than…

The purpose of this article is to describe an innovative teaching method in which American undergraduate students were asked to write haiku-a Japanese poetry form-about the lives of nursing home residents. Drawing on both their own experiences and May Sarton's novel "As We Are Now", class members created poems about institutionalization that…

Although it is true that good planning does not always lead to a good life, it is equally true that supporting people to have a full, rich life does not happen without good planning. In the past 12 years, the author's organization has supported over 125 people to live in their own homes, control their own funding, direct their own supports,…

"For most children and learners, things are getting better." This is an important and encouraging message from Ofsted Chief Inspector Christine Gilbert's Annual Report for 2007/08, and one to hang on to. However, it is not the whole story. From a social justice perspective it is also important to note for whom this is not the case. The Chief…

Prisons are intended to rehabilitate criminal offenders, as well as to punish and incapacitate them. The education and training systems operating within most prisons are a key component of the rehabilitation mission of prisons. Previous studies have shown a relationship between participation in educational programs and recidivism rates, with…

Prisons are usually oppressive, bureaucratic, alienating places that sever or suspend the prisoner's sense of community and restrict the possibility (or desire) for social and civic participation. They produce a nihilistic culture that encourages a numbing detachment from others. How is it that we can speak of democracy in places such as these?…

The attentional blink (AB) is a robust phenomenon that has been consistently reported in the cognitive literature. The AB is found when two target images (T1, T2) are presented within 500 ms of each other and errors are induced on the perceptual report of T2. The AB may increase when T1 has some salience to the viewer. This study examined the…

Suicide prevention training for the prison service in England and Wales has been criticized. STORM is a package emphasizing the practice and review of interactions with suicidal persons and was evaluated in a pilot study for use in prisons. Trainees completed questionnaires immediately before and after training and at 6 to 8 months follow-up.…

Decision making is one of the essential skills advocated by the National Council for the Social Studies for effective citizenship in a democratic society. Leaders in any society make decisions that influence many lives. In a democratic society, we expect that deductive and inductive reasoning guide decisions made for the common good. However, what…

The effect of psychiatric disorders on human immunodeficiency virus/sexually transmitted infection (HIV/STI) risk behaviors in juvenile justice youths is examined. Prevalence, persistence and prediction are addressed among four mutually exclusive diagnostic groups and results show a high prevalence rate of many HIV/STI sexual risk behaviors that…

There is considerable debate about the assessment of psychopathic traits in adolescence due in part to questions regarding the stability of traits. We investigated the 6-month stability of psychopathic traits in a sample of 83 male adolescent offenders using an augmented protocol for the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version and the self-report…

We investigate whether the intervention designed by Kuhn and Udell (2003) to develop argument skills could be implemented productively among adolescent males in a residential juvenile detention facility--boys who were educationally disengaged and severely disadvantaged academically as well as socially. Compared to a control group from the same…

Mental health professionals conducting screenings in jail settings face formidable challenges in identifying inmates at risk for major depression and suicide. Psychologists often rely on correctional staff to provide initial appraisals of those inmates requiring further evaluation. In a sample of 100 jail detainees, the effectiveness of two…

Counselors pride themselves on their developmental focus; however, they have generally only applied phasic theories to counseling practice and have not incorporated constructive "stage" theories into clinical work. This article begins to rectify that lack by explicating the relevance of Kegan's subject-object theory for counseling practice, by…

Prior event-based research regarding the relationship between alcohol and violence suffers from important limitations, including the absence of a comparison group, an inappropriate comparison group, or a comparison group that could be considered appropriate but does not control for potential confounders. To overcome such limitations, we use a…