PREDICTING THE RECIDIVISM OF SERIOUS YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS USING SURVIVAL MODELS*

Increases over the past decade in the number and seriousness of crimes committed by young offenders have resulted in renewed interest in control of the serious, violent, or chronic youthful offender. Recent research has established a number of theoretically relevant variables associated with persistent offending and offending defined recidivism. Few studies, however, have examined the individual characteristics that might predict the timing of youthful recidivism. This paper seeks to fill some gaps in knowledge of the serious youthful offender by estimating a multivariate survival model for a sample of youths paroled from California Youth Authority institutions. The model's results are then used to develop risk-assessment profiles for the sample. We suggest that these profiles may provide a reasonable approach for establishing treatment protocols or supervision requirements for paroled youths.     

REEVALUATING THE CUSTODY-THERAPY CONFLICT PARADIGM IN CORRECTIONAL MENTAL HEALTH SETTINGS*

It has become almost axiomatic in sociological analyses of interactions between mental health and criminal justice personnel that their respective ideologies are inherently contradictory and produce conflict within organizations in which both groups are working. Because key components of the mental health system have changed dramatically since the seminal research in this area was conducted and because these concepts were never tested in certain criminal justice organizations, many commonly accepted generalizations about custody-therapy conflicts warrant new examination. Interview and questionnaire data from a national sample of 43 county jails with mental health programs were analyzed. In contrast to earlier research, fundamental conflicts between mental health and correctional staff were not frequent. Rather, Pondy's concept of frictional Conflicts, which are not fundamental to either individual interactions or organizational operations, were more typical. Jails, as short-term people-processing organizations, cannot be assumed to fit organizational research results generated from state prisons.     

MACRO-MICRO INTEGRATION IN THE STUDY OF VICTIMIZATION: A HIERARCHICAL LOGISTIC MODEL ANALYSIS ACROSS SEATTLE NEIGHBORHOODS*

Recent contextual analyses of victimization survey data are extended by application of hierarchical logistic model techniques. Using a multi-stage sample of 5,090 Seattle residents, we estimate models for individuals' risks of violent crime and burglary victimization as a function of both individual crime opportunity factors (routine activity and personal lifestyle) and contextual indicators of neighborhood social disorganization (neighborhood incivilities on conditions of disorder, ethnic heterogeneity, and neighborhood density in terms of both residents and strangers). Strong contextual direct effects of density, disorder, and heterogeneity are observed for violent and or burglary risks. Further, the hierarchical method used here provides a richer type of contextual analysis, indicating that neighborhood factors also “condition” the impact of crime opportunity factors for risk of both violent and burglary victimization. Implications for theoretical integration, victimization prevention strategies, and crime control policies are discussed.