Prison gang integration and inmate violence

Purpose

Gang membership has been linked in a number of prior studies with inmate misconduct; known gang members are more prone than non-gang members to act violently behind bars. Theories of intergroup conflict suggest, however, there is reason to expect that broader within-prison gang dynamics, not just gang membership alone, are associated with the incidence of violence.

Methods

We collected data on inmates from a large southern state and estimated multilevel models of inmate-on-inmate violence. Included in our models were a variety of common individual-level correlates of violent misconduct, among them gang membership. Substantive prison-level correlates included the percentage of gang members and “gang integration,” the latter being a measure of gang heterogeneity.

Results

We found a modest association between both gang variables and inmate-on-inmate violence, with gang integration being the most significant of the two.

Conclusions

Gang membership is an important correlate of inmate violence, but attention to broader prison gang dynamics is clearly necessary. We discuss the implications of this finding for theories of inmate violence.     

The causal relationship between gang joining and violent victimization: A critical review and directions for future research

Purpose

This article provides a critical review of the state of research on the gang membership-violent victimization relationship.

Methods

This study examines a comprehensive list of published quantitative studies that have assessed the relationship between gang membership and violent victimization.

Results

By examining strengths and weaknesses of the design features of various studies, this article identifies theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and statistical issues that should be considered when interpreting the causal effect of gang membership on violent victimization. Some of the methodological and design issues discussed include, but are not limited to, consequences of failing to establish temporal order, failure to conduct sensitivity analyses to determine treatment effects, use of bootstrapping methods with propensity score analysis, measurement of violent victimization, and corrections for dependence in matched samples of gang and non-gang members.

Conclusion

Suggestions for future research are provided that will help advance the empirical study of the gang membership-violent victimization nexus.     

Understanding the relationship between violent victimization and gang membership

Purpose

Research examining factors that precipitate gang violence has contributed substantially to our understanding of gangs and gang activity with respect to offending, yet we still know relatively little about how gangs influence members’ risk of victimization. The current study examines three hypotheses: (1) gang involvement and involvement in other risky lifestyles is related to violent victimization, (2) involvement in gang crime is associated with violent victimization, and (3) the presence of rival gangs is related to violent victimization.

Methods

The present study uses data obtained from 909 recently booked juvenile arrestees who were interviewed as part of the Arizona Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program.

Results

Our findings indicated that prevalence of violent victimization was highest among gang members, followed by former gang members, gang associates, and non-gang members. After controlling for involvement in gang crime, however, gang membership per se did not significantly influence the juveniles’ risk of serious violent victimization.

Conclusions

Our results call into question the conclusion that gang membership alone increases the likelihood of violent victimization vis-à-vis lifestyle/routine activities and/or collective liability. Instead our findings support prior research on the victim-offender overlap, that offending behaviors increase the risk of victimization.     

Correlates and consequences of pre-incarceration gang involvement among incarcerated youthful felons

Objective

The primary aim of the study is to document the prevalence and variation in types of pre-incarceration gang membership among a sample of incarcerated felons. The second goal is to consider if and how pre-incarceration gang involvement affects institutional behavior.

Materials and Methods

This study builds on the existing literature by considering if and how different types of pre-incarceration gang involvement effect prison misconduct. This relationship is examined while controlling for attitudinal measures and pre-prison social characteristics that may condition entrance into gangs and involvement in serious prison misconduct. The study includes a sample of 504 youthful adults incarcerated in a large Midwestern state in 1996.

Results

The results highlight that there is a high degree of variation in pre-incarceration gang involvement. Moreover, involvement in different types of gangs also is a significant predictor of prison misconduct. Individuals involved in organized/criminal gangs at the point of incarceration experienced significantly more serious misconduct reports than their non-gang counterparts, but similar findings were not evident for those involved in unorganized gangs.

Conclusions

Even among a relatively serious population of youthful adult offenders, pre-incarceration gang involvement is uncommon. Pre-incarceration involvement in organized gangs represents a significant risk factor for prison misconduct.     

GENERAL STRAIN THEORY, PERSISTENCE, AND DESISTANCE AMONG YOUNG ADULT MALES

Purpose

Despite the surge in scholarly activity investigating the criminal career, relatively less attention has been devoted to the issue of criminal desistance versus persistence (until recently). The present study contributed to our understanding of this process by exploring the suitability of General Strain Theory (GST) for predicting changes in criminal activity across time.

Methods

Data from a longitudinal study of males in South Florida are examined using robust regression analyses.

Results

The core GST relationship, that changes in strain should predict changes in criminal activity, was supported, even after controlling for important adult social roles such as marriage, labor force participation, and education. While no support for the proposition that changes in self-esteem and social support moderate the strain-criminal desistance association was evinced, evidence was found that angry disposition, a measure of negative emotionality, moderated the association between change in chronic stressors and change in criminal activity.

Conclusions

While exploratory in nature, these findings demonstrate the utility of employing GST principles in studies of criminal desistance.     

Serious assaults on prison staff: A descriptive analysis

Objective

The current study sought to illuminate the patterns associated with serious inmate-on-staff assaults, as well as the characteristics of perpetrators and victims.

Material and methods

This study examined 79 assaults on prison staff requiring more than first aid treatment, perpetrated by 96 inmates, in a large state correctional department during a 14-month period (September 1, 2007 through October 31, 2008).

Results

These assaults were both infrequent (53 per 100,000 inmates annually) and progressively more infrequent as the severity increased (hospitalization for non-life threatening injury or required reconstructive surgery = 2.2 per 100,000 inmates annually; hospitalization for life-threatening injury = 0.5 per 100,000 inmates annually). Among staff victims, Black and female correctional officers were underrepresented. Inmate perpetrators who were younger, Black, prison gang members, and/or serving sentences for violent offenses were disproportionately represented among assailants.

Conclusions

The low overall rate of serious staff assaults attests to the level of professionalism and training in modern corrections departments. Nonetheless, situational factors uncovered in the current analysis suggest that particular circumstances increase the likelihood of staff assaults, hence the need for continued training and vigilance on the part of correctional staff that come in direct contact with inmates.     

Sugar and spice and everything nice? Exploring institutional misconduct among serious and violent female delinquents

Purpose

Despite an emerging body of research on the institutional behavior and adjustment of delinquent males, there exists little information on the incarceration experiences of female delinquents. The present study explored the incidence, prevalence, and determinants of institutional misconduct among a sample of 139 serious and violent delinquent females sentenced to state juvenile incarceration.

Methods

Secondary data analysis was used for the present study. Data utilized were derived from information originally gathered by correctional staff during intake at a state Youth Correctional System (a pseudonym) and during an offender's entire incarceration through on-site diagnostic processes, staff observations, official records, and offender self-reports.

Results

Members of the study sample engaged in roughly 700 incidents of major misconduct and more than 12,000 instances of minor institutional misconduct during their incarceration. Results from negative binomial regression models examining four different types of institutional misconduct revealed that age at commitment, offense type, mental health status, and gang affiliation were related to the expected rate of misconduct, although this varied by misconduct type.

Conclusions

Institutionalization is not necessarily a period of desistance from offending for all delinquent girls. As institutional misconduct may impact post-release recidivism, it is important to identify and intervene with at-risk juveniles during periods of incarceration.     

Is teen court the best fit? Assessing the predictive validity of the Teen Court Peer Influence Scale

Purpose

Despite the increased use of teen courts for first time, non-violent juvenile offenders, there has been little research examining the decision-making processes regarding which offenders are best suited for this type of intervention. The Teen Court Peer Influence Scale (TCPIS) was developed to assist juvenile justice officials in making these determinations. The purpose of the present research is to determine the predictive validity of the TCPIS.

Methods

The TCPIS was administered to a nonprobability sample of teen court participants in Florida (N = 404) between September 2006 and February 2007. Dependent measures for the validity analysis were developed from the Youth Self-administered Questionnaire and included social bonds, prosocial attitudes, delinquent peer associations, positive perceptions of teen court, and perceived delinquency.

Results

All hypotheses were supported with the TCPIS global score accounting for a significant amount of variance among each of the delinquency measures strengthening the predictive validity of the measure.

Conclusions

These preliminary findings are positive regarding the predictive validity of the TCPIS. With additional research, the TCPIS could be a useful tool for decision-makers regarding which juvenile offenders are the best fit for teen court diversion programs.     

Decide your time: Testing deterrence theory's certainty and celerity effects on substance-using probationers

Background

Bolstered by the initial effectiveness of programs such as Hawaii's Project HOPE, the resurgence in practical applications of deterrence theory has focused on certainty and swiftness of punishment. Following this theoretical trend, Delaware's Decide Your Time (DYT) program was designed to manage high risk substance-using probationers by focusing on the certainty of detection through frequent drug tests and graduated but not severe sanctions.

Objective

This paper, stemming from a larger process evaluation of DYT, reports on the theoretical development and implementation issues involved in instituting such a program in a large, urban probation department.

Methods

Data for the current effort consisted of notes taken at DYT management and staff meetings, interviews with key informants, and observational fieldwork.

Results

The evaluation demonstrated that judicial practices, client eligibility, logistics, and cooperation with secure facilities all posed noteworthy issues for program implementation. Perhaps just as important is the willingness of the program managers to listen to front line officers and make necessary changes to ensure the program's effectiveness and efficiency.

Conclusion

This study suggests that the design of similar programs should carefully consider the local legal structure and the policies and practices of the corrections institutions, treatment providers, and probation department.     

The effect of prison gang membership on recidivism

Purpose

How does prison gang membership affect recidivism? In this paper, we use a unique dataset of all releasees from prisons operated by the Illinois Department of Corrections during the month of November 2000, which includes demographic information and data on gang participation. We attempt to control for confounding factors that are traditionally associated with both prison gang membership and rearrest.

Methods

We develop a potential-outcomes framework and describe the conditions under which a counterfactual can be estimated when gang membership is not randomly assigned. We combine regression analysis with Coarsened Exact Matching, which has several advantages over the more popular propensity score matching, to estimate the effect of gang membership on recidivism.

Results

Prison gang membership results in a six percentage point increase in recidivism.

Conclusions

Despite the strengths of the data, unobserved heterogeneity among inmates could still bias estimates. However, there are probably important subtleties to the gang participation decision such that experimental or quasi-experimental data are unlikely to increase our understanding of the relationship between gang-membership and post-release outcomes. We recommend incorporating ethnography with survey data collection, because ethnographers are able to document otherwise unobservable contextual information concerning the selection process which could be used to identify causal relationships.     

ADHD and criminality: A primer on the genetic, neurobiological, evolutionary, and treatment literature for criminologists

Objective

This state of the art review of 102 studies is a primer on ADHD and its major comorbidities for criminologists unfamiliar with the genetic, neurobiological, and evolutionary literatures.

Materials and methods

Neurological, genetic, medical, and criminal justice data bases were keyword searched for articles on ADHD and/or articles using ADHD as a major independent variable.

Results

ADHD is a disorder that is closely connected to externalizing behaviors, conduct problems, and criminal behavior across the life course.

Conclusions

To date, ADHD research has been carried out primarily by biomedical researchers and de-emphasized by criminologists whose training is overwhelmingly in the social sciences. The special expertise of criminologists in uncovering environmental correlates of antisocial behavior can benefit biomedical researchers who in turn can assist criminologists in uncovering the individual-level correlates of antisocial behavior.     

Marijuana But Not Alcohol Use During Adolescence Mediates the Association Between Transmissible Risk for Substance Use Disorder and Number of Lifetime Violent Offenses

Aim

This study determined the extent to which alcohol and marijuana use during adolescence mediates the relation between transmissible risk for substance use disorder (SUD) and lifetime number of different types of violent offenses.

Methods

The transmissible liability index was administered to 359 10-12 year old youths who were tracked to 22 years of age. Past year frequency of alcohol and marijuana consumption was longitudinally tracked to age 22 at which time lifetime violent offenses was recorded.

Results

Rate of increase in marijuana use mediated the association between transmissible risk and lifetime number of different types of violent offenses. No association was found between past year frequency of alcohol use and violent offenses.

Conclusions

Prevention directed at lowering the psychological characteristics associated with transmissible risk for SUD may also reduce violent offending.     

Child and adolescent psychopathy: A state-of-the-art reflection on the construct and etiological theories

Purpose

There is a growing interest in the identification of psychopathic traits in infancy and adolescence. This effort will enable the development of predictive models of aggressive and violent behavior, in order to intervene effectively both in preventive and therapeutic levels. Several authors have suggested that the presence or absence of psychopathic traits, together with the factors that sustain, maximize or minimize them, can help in the identification of the etiology and developmental trajectories of anti-social individuals.

Materials and Methods

Meta-narrative review of the child and adolescent psychopathy construct.

Results

This state-of-the-art review discusses the concept of child and adolescent psychopathy, taking into account historical and conceptual issues.

Conclusion

Evolutionary Theories can add a major contribution to the understanding of the origins of psychopathic traits.     

Groups, gangs, and delinquency: Does organization matter?

Purpose

A consistent finding of research on delinquency has been that gang members show higher levels of delinquent behavior than non-gang members. However, research attempting to understand the mechanisms underlying this finding is lacking. The basic premise of the current article is that the level of organization found in delinquent groups and gangs matters in clarifying the relationship between membership and delinquency.

Methods

This article examined the association between organization and delinquency in a sample of 523 self-reported juvenile offenders from a high school survey conducted in the province of Quebec, Canada.

Results

The results showed that 1) there is clearly something special about membership in a gang that influences delinquency beyond the more general membership in a delinquent group; 2) the key to understanding finding lies, in part, in the level of organization found in gangs. Organization emerged as the most important factor associated with general delinquency, involvement in violence, and in drug supply offences, significantly (but not completely) reducing the effect of gang membership on delinquency.

Conclusions

Even if most delinquent associations show little signs of formal structure and organization, this study demonstrates the importance of organization as a key mechanism to understand the gang effect on delinquency.     

Personality, antisocial behavior, and aggression: A meta-analytic review

Purpose

Although the relationship between personality and antisocial behaviors has been widely examined and empirically supported in the psychological literature, relatively few efforts to study this relationship have appeared in mainstream criminology.

Materials and methods

The current study focuses on the domains and facets from the Five-Factor Model of personality, and how they are related to antisocial and aggressive behaviors.

Results

The meta-analytic findings indicate that the higher-order traits of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism demonstrate the most consistent relationships with these outcomes. At the lower-order trait level, straightforwardness, compliance, and altruism from Agreeableness, deliberation from Conscientiousness, angry hostility from Neuroticism, and warmth from Extraversion were among the strongest correlates.

Conclusion

The findings are consistent with previous meta-analytic studies, thus providing compelling support for their utility in understanding antisocial and aggressive behavior. As such, they should be afforded greater theoretical and empirical attention within criminology.     

Changes in self-control during adolescence: Investigating the influence of the adolescent peer network

Purpose

Previous research on changes in self-control during adolescence provides evidence of stability for most individuals but change for some, drawing attention to the role of factors that may account for change. We contribute to this area of research by examining the extent to which changes in peer self-control and peer delinquency within peer networks is related to individual self-control during adolescence.

Method

This study uses longitudinal social network data from three waves of the NSCR School Project to construct growth curve models of self-control and MLM models to examine the factors that contribute to changes in self-control.

Results

Growth curve models demonstrate within and between-individual differences in changes to self-control that occur between ages 12-17. Furthermore, multilevel models reveal that changes in levels of self-control and delinquency among respondent's peers are related to between-individual differences and within-individual changes in self-control, net of parental social control.

Conclusions

This study finds that self-control continues to evolve during adolescence as a result of processes that take place within adolescent peer-networks, calling into question Gottfredson and Hirschi's contention that peers are inconsequential for explaining differences in self-control across individuals.     

The ties that bind or the ties that break: Examining the relationship between visitation and prisoner misconduct

Purpose

Prior theory and research suggest that inmate visitation can reduce misconduct in prison. However, prior studies have not accounted for the longitudinal and heterogeneous nature of these experiences. This paper addresses this research gap by examining variation in visitation experiences and the relationship between patterns of visitation and misconduct.

Methods

Using a cohort of offenders incarcerated in Florida between 2000 and 2002, group-based trajectory model analyses were used to identify groups of inmates based on their visitation and misconduct patterns. Dual trajectory analysis was used to then assess the extent to which the development of visitation and misconduct patterns are interrelated.

Results

Visitation, and more consistent visitation in particular, is associated with less prison misconduct.

Conclusions

Visitation may reduce inmate misconduct. Implications for future research, theory, and policy are discussed.     

Incarceration, education and transition from delinquency

Purpose

Much of what is known regarding the transition away from crime is limited to young adulthood and specific life events and samples of non-serious offenders comprised mainly of white males.

Methods

The current study assesses the potential links between educational achievement, post-release schooling, and re-arrest for a cohort of 4,147 incarcerated youths drawn from 115 Florida juvenile institutions and followed for two years post-release.

Results

Incarcerated youths with higher levels of educational achievement are more likely to return to school after release, and those youths who returned to and attended school regularly were less likely to be rearrested within 12 and 24 months. Moreover, among youths who were rearrested, those youth who attended school regularly following release were arrested for significantly less serious offenses compared to youths who did not attend school or attended less regularly.

Conclusions

The study concludes with discussion of the importance of educational achievement as an important turning point for juvenile offenders as they transition into young adulthood.     

Keeping promises: A systematic review and a new classification of gang control strategies

Purpose

We argue that inadequate frameworks to compare similar gang control strategies, and the scarcity of well-designed evaluations have hindered our ability to determine the effectiveness of existing programs. This article proposes a new typology of gang control strategies to use with logic models as tools to improve gang program evaluation.

Methods

We conducted a systematic review of gang control strategy evaluation reports and created a typology from the studies identified. Studies were selected on the basis of methodological quality in order to reflect only rigorous evaluations with credible research findings.

Results

Forty-five studies were selected and reviewed. Studies were classified in homogeneous categories based on the targeted population and the objective of the strategy. We infer logic models that consider the activities, outputs, and outcomes of each type of strategy.

Conclusion

A better framework for the comparison of similar studies may allow meta-analyses to be conducted, thereby improving our knowledge of what works. Logic models can move the field forward by allowing researchers to understand why some programs work and others do not. The improvement, both in quality and quantity, of program evaluation in gang research is crucial in order to move beyond claims of promising approaches.