In this article, the author, Program Administrator of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office (PCSO) Project New Attitudes in Clearwater, Florida, describes the project. The PCSO is the country's largest law enforcement agency, providing law enforcement services to over 400,000 of its residents who reside in the unincorporated areas of the county and…

In this article, the author describes the Lifeskills for Women program of the Shelby County Division of Corrections (Memphis, Tennessee). The program offers strategies and approaches to reversing faulty cognitive systems and behavioral patterns of incarcerated women preparing for community reentry. First implemented in 1997, and subsequently…

In three samples consisting of community and undergraduate men and women and incarcerated men, we examined the criterion validity of two distinct factors of psychopathy embodied in the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) as indexed by primary trait scales from the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ). Consistent with the PPI…

An experimental scale for the assessment of prison violence risk among maximum security inmates was developed from a logistic regression analysis involving inmates serving parole-eligible terms of varying length (n = 1,503), life-without-parole inmates (n = 960), and death-sentenced inmates who were mainstreamed into the general prison population…

This study measured the likelihood of youth incarceration among adolescent males from father-absent households, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N=34,031 person-years). At baseline, the adolescents ranged from 14 to 17 years, and the incarceration outcome measure spanned ages 15 to 30 years. This study tested whether risk…

The authors describe use and development of the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment (E. I. McConnaughy, J. O. Prochaska, & W. F. Velicer, 1983) and examine the psychometric properties of scores from incarcerated male adolescents. Cluster analysis revealed 3 unique profiles (Precontemplators, Participators, and Undifferentiated).…

The current study examined attachment style, strengths, and difficulties in institutionalized and non-institutionalized children with below-average intellectual abilities. Parents/caregivers and teachers of the children completed a brief measure of attachment style and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, which assesses the most important…

The current study explores the relationship of disability and ethnicity to academic achievement among youth in juvenile corrections. The average reading level of the incarcerated boys in this study was at the eighth grade level, while their average math score was at the seventh grade level. Approximately 30% of the youth were identified as…

The impact of a consumer-directed family support program on actual out-of-home placement in one American state was evaluated over an 8-year period. Under this program, individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families control their own resources and design and direct supports through the use of cash allowances or individualized…

This study reviews state and national surveys of prisoner literacy and compares their results to two recent surveys of literacy in Michigan prisoners. The persistent notion that prisoners are severely illiterate is shown to be a myth. In Michigan, only 10 to 11% of commitments were found to have Test of Adult Basic Education scores below grade…

In recent years, disrupting the supply of illicit drugs and injecting equipment inside Her Majesty's (HM) prisons has become an important focus for prison drug policy. This paper presents findings from qualitative research, which invited 24 drug injectors with prison experience to discuss the role and operation of illicit drug and injecting…

Sex offenders have been shown to possess a number of consistent characteristics such as lack of empathic responding, distorted cognitions, a sense of entitlement, and lack of self-esteem. Though these constructs have been given considerable attention in the literature, little attention has been paid to what role intrapsychic conflict may play in…

The authors of this article suggest a number of areas worthy of further research regarding family disruptions that lead to children's separation from their primary caregivers. They survey the existing data and suggest questions for new research on the effects of marital divorce, maternal incarceration, maternal depression and substance…

For more than 50 years, adolescent peer group treatment has been both glorified and criticized. Quality control has been a problem for the Positive Peer Culture (PPC) treatment modality throughout its history. The following article includes observations and commentary on the history, strength-based elements, and criticism of PPC.

Despite a growing realization that unmeasured programmatic differences influence prison-based drug treatment effectiveness, few attempts to systematically measure such differences have been made. To improve program planning and evaluation in this area, we developed a census instrument to collect descriptive information about 118 prison-based drug…