A promising jail reentry program revisited: results from a quasi-experimental design

Prisoner reentry remains a significant challenge for the criminal justice system with millions of offenders returning to society each year from the nation’s prisons and jails. Employment, housing, and access to substance abuse and mental health treatment are common, often unmet, challenges for the returning offender. In response, state and local jurisdictions have implemented reentry programming designed to assist in the transition from incarceration to the community. While most of these programs have targeted offenders in prisons, a growing number of local jurisdictions have implemented reentry initiatives through federal funding. This study examines the second cohort (2011–2013) of the Auglaize County (OH) transition program (ACT), a BJA-designated ‘promising’ reentry program. This evaluation sought to determine if the program maintained its positive impact on participant recidivism. Findings indicate that the treatment group had significantly lower rates of rearrest and probation violations at the bivariate level, but that these results did not hold for rearrest after the inclusion of relevant control variables in the multivariate analysis. Participation remained significantly associated with reduced probation violations at the multivariate level.     

Goodbye to All That

This article is the retirement reflections of an MP of thirty‐eight year's standing. The story is mainly one of the decline of the Commons, a decline in the number of ‘big beasts’ and in the calibre of members and the quality of debates to the level of five‐minute harangues and the custard pie‐throwing of Prime Minister's Question Time. The House has lost its functions of staging the national debate and checking the executive to the media but has gained a new role as a national audit of government's performance and policies through the select committee system. MPs are working harder. Fewer now have outside jobs. They are more focused on their constituencies and though they have fewer powers there, and nationally more and better staff, they also have less respect and less influence. Personally, the end of what has been a long‐fighting national retreat from social democracy has been a rear‐guard action against the emergence of a colder, harder, neoliberal world. Retirement means relegation to watching that from the sidelines, not ringside.     

Removing the barriers; adolescent coping and attitudes towards mental health services in custodial settings – Can we improve services?

Young people in custodial care are known to have high levels of mental health and emotional problems, and recent policy and service developments have sought to improve their access to services. However, little is known about how they cope or about what would increase their uptake of services (when such services are available). This study aimed to develop, validate and use a standardised measure to examine the coping, help-seeking and attitudes of a larger cohort of young people in custody. There was a marked reluctance to seek help for any but the most serious of problems, but there were also indicators of what would make services more acceptable to this population, with implications for both commissioning and delivering services. In particular, greater involvement of parents and carers, offering a wider range of interventions and offering them more flexibly, and challenging stigma within the secure environment may increase uptake of services.