This article features Language Partners, an ESL program offered at the Danville Correctional Center, a medium-security men's prison in central Illinois. The program in which prisoners teach ESL classes, supported by volunteer teacher-trainers, is a learning community with immense and sometimes unforeseen value. The authors discuss reasons for…

Despite general consensus over the value of measuring self-reported offending, discrepancies exist in methods of scoring self-reported offending and the length of the reference period over which offending is assessed. This analysis compared the concurrent interassociations and longitudinal predictive strength of diversity, frequency, and severity…

This article reports the results of a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study conducted by a university faculty member and two incarcerated college graduates in Indiana. The research team designed and piloted a service-learning program specifically aimed at college-level inmates in a maximum security prison. This qualitative study used…

Given the rates of reincarceration in the United States, it is important to understand criminal justice risk and protective factors. Hope is a potentially important factor with two components-agency (goal-directed determination) and pathways (planning to meet goals; Snyder et al., 1991). We conducted a secondary data analysis (n = 45) of a…

The purpose of this theoretical study was to explore, examine, and analyze the United States (US) Zero Tolerance (ZT) educational policies and practices of the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon. This study specifically explored the influence of the ZT policy on African American males becoming part of that system. The study was guided by three…

Objective: There is a substantial body of research on risk factors for violent behavior in adulthood but little empirical study of protective factors and desistance. Method: This study aimed to investigate the protective effects of factors hypothesized to reduce violent reoffending among a sample of 800 male prisoners following release into the…

There is an extensive and well-developed body of literature on the nature of faculty work (e.g., Blackburn & Lawrence, 1996; Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006) that has examined numerous aspects of faculty work and sources of influence on that work (e.g., intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, personal characteristics, disciplinary affiliation,…

This article links community safety with recidivism and argues that reintegration of offenders is a community responsibility. The paper discusses the role of vocational training for incarcerated offenders as a tool to reduce recidivism. Training and subsequent employment for released offenders are factors that assist them to become contributing…

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe how sexually abused children experience the legal process, a process that includes being questioned by the police during the preliminary investigation and by lawyers and the prosecutor in the courtroom, and meeting other professionals from various agencies. Method: Face-to-face in-depth interviews…

Faith-based organizations administer many of the prison-based programs aimed at reducing recidivism. Many of these organizations also manage treatment programs for substance abusers, at-risk juveniles, and ex-offenders. Much of the research on religiosity and delinquency indicates that the two are inversely related. Therefore, it seems plausible…

Social workers employed in areas such as public child welfare, substance abuse, and corrections often provide services to involuntary clients. These individuals do not seek social work services on their own volition and may be actively opposed to the services they are receiving. This study explores social work students' attitudes about working…

This study examined factors influencing clinician predictions of recidivism for juvenile offenders, including youth age at initial juvenile justice system involvement, youth age at discharge, program completion status, clinician perception of strength of the therapeutic relationship, and clinician perception of youth commitment to treatment.…

This systematic review sought to understand the individual characteristics of incarcerated youth within the major risk factor domains identified by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). A comprehensive search of the literature from 1979 to 2013 identified 85 articles of individual-level risk characteristics that…

Using the criteria established by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the assessment procedures for establishing an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a previously undiagnosed adjudicated group is detailed. We examined 37 male adolescents adjudicated delinquent for sexual offenses who were sentenced to treatment. Ultimately, 22 (60%) were found to…

Over the last two decades, the criminalization and demonization of Chican@/Latin@ youth has produced policies in the United States that have banned bilingual education, Mexican American Studies in Tucson, and undocumented students in Georgia from attending public universities. Furthermore, hundreds and thousands of youth in the U.S. are…