Traumatic Brain Injury among Indiana State Prisoners

Research on traumatic brain injury among inmates has focused on comparing the rate of traumatic brain injury among offenders to the general population, but also how best to screen for traumatic brain injury among this population. This study administered the short version of the Ohio State University Traumatic Brain Injury Identification Method to all male inmates admitted into Indiana state prisons were screened for a month (N = 831). Results indicate that 35.7% of the inmates reported experiencing a traumatic brain injury during their lifetime and that these inmates were more likely to have a psychiatric disorder and a prior period of incarceration than those without. Logistic regression analysis finds that a traumatic brain injury predicts the likelihood of prior incarceration net of age, race, education, and psychiatric disorder. This study suggests that brief instruments can be successfully implemented into prison screenings to help divert inmates into needed treatment.     

The intersection of race and gender: an examination of sentencing outcomes in North Carolina

This study examines the intersection of offenders’ race and gender in the sentencing process using data on felony cases sentenced in North Carolina. Analyses examine the likelihood that charges were reduced in severity between initial filing and conviction, the likelihood of imprisonment, and the length of sentence imposed, and test whether race affects punishment similarly for men and women. Results indicate that status characteristics predict both reductions in charge severity and the severity of the final sentence, and that racial disparity is conditional on gender. However, the results are not entirely consistent with predictions derived from the extant literature. Gender significantly predicts case outcomes at each stage, but black men were not uniformly disadvantaged, and black women received the least severe treatment in two out of four analyses. Theoretical implications for the intersection of race and gender in sentencing theories are discussed.     

河北省未成年人犯罪基本情况调查及原因分析

采用艾森克个性问卷及自编基本情况调查表对395名未成年男犯进行调查,结果显示,未成年男犯在文化程度、作案地区、家庭结构及家庭教养方式等方面存在新的变化趋势,犯罪原因集中在家庭、学校、社会及个人心理因素等各方面。     

System management and compensatory parenting: Educational involvement after maternal incarceration

Research has demonstrated that paternal incarceration is associated with lower levels of educational involvement among fathers and primary caregivers, but little is known regarding caregiver educational involvement when mothers have been incarcerated. In this study, we present the first analysis of variation in school- and home-based educational involvement by maternal incarceration history, pairing survey and interview data to connect macro-level group differences with micro-level narratives of mothers’ involvement in their children's education. Our survey data demonstrate that children of ever-incarcerated mothers experience increased school-based educational involvement by their primary caregivers, regardless of whether the caregiver is the mother herself. Our interview data point to compensatory parenting as a key motivating factor in educational involvement, wherein a caregiver endeavors to “make up for” the child's history of maternal incarceration. Findings add to the literature demonstrating maternal incarceration as a distinct experience from both paternal incarceration and material disadvantage alone, and they suggest the need to explore the role of schools as potential points of productive institutional involvement for mothers with an incarceration history.     

DIFFERENTIATING SERIOUS ADOLESCENT OFFENDERS WHO EXIT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM FROM THOSE WHO DO NOT

Numerous factors have been posited to promote desistance from criminal offending in late adolescence and early adulthood. Research in this area has generally examined these factors for their impact on offending for a period shortly after the occurrence or shifts in possible predictors. The current study takes a slightly different approach. It examines the broad relation of life changes and developmental patterns to wholesale shifts in offending behavior. The current study uses data from the Pathways to Desistance study to compare the developmental patterns of two groups of serious adolescent male offenders: those who are “system successes” with no subsequent criminal justice system involvement and a matched sample for a 7‐year period after court involvement for a felony offense. Findings from growth curve analyses indicate that patterns of change in criminal attitudes, psychosocial development, and legal employment over this extended follow‐up period are related to an absence of offending. These results support further investigation of the synergistic effects of psychological changes and entry into the job market as possible mechanisms promoting desistance during this developmental period. The policy and practice implications of these findings are discussed.     

A Criminal Career Study of the Continuity and Discontinuity of Sex Offending during the Adolescence-Adulthood Transition: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Incarcerated Youth

Longitudinal research has seriously challenged assumptions that juvenile sex offenders (JSO) are characterized by high level of dangerousness, mental health problems, and crime specialization in sex offenses. The current study examines the longitudinal pattern of offending among a sample of JSO and a sample of juvenile nonsex offenders. The research design includes longitudinal data over a nine-year period allowing the examination of offending patterns and the crime mix from age 12 to age 23. The findings highlight that, while JSO are prone to persist offending in adulthood, there is limited continuity of sex offending. Further, the findings stress the importance of taking into account nonsexual juvenile delinquency, more specifically, youth violence, to make a better assessment of early adult offending outcomes of JSO.     

Young and armed: a cross-sectional study on weapon carrying among adolescents

The purpose of this study was to identify empirically, for the first time in France, the prevalence of adolescent weapon carrying with particular focus on the contribution of a broad range of social bonding, strain, social learning, and sociodemographic predictors. A multivariate logistic regression model was conducted using a backward elimination procedure to identify the significant predictors of weapon carrying controlling for age, gender, and SES in a sample of 12,706 French youth aged 11–19 years. Results revealed that the odds of weapon carrying increased among adolescents who suffered from past victimization, who had a negative relationship with their mother, and who repeated a grade at school. Moreover, holding pro-delinquent beliefs and having delinquent peers also increased the odds of weapon carrying. Our findings highlight the importance of the interpersonal and social context when examining the determinants of weapon carrying and showed a unique contribution of components of social bonding, strain, and social learning in weapon carrying among adolescents.     

Making mothers: parenting classes in a women’s jail

In the wake of the War on Drugs, more mothers are incarcerated in US prisons and jails than ever before. Parenting classes have become ubiquitous in penal facilities that incarcerate women, but research about mothers’ experience in parenting class is limited to measures of efficacy about things like parenting attitudes and mental-health indicators. This study supplements existing research by adding an ethnographic lens to women’s experiences with parenting classes during incarceration. Drawing on 18 months of participant observation in the women’s unit of a county jail and 83 interviews with incarcerated mothers, I analyze incarcerated mothers’ experiences with parenting classes. Staff and inmates used parenting classes to create ways for women to do mothering during incarceration. Mothering in your head, longing to mother, and guilt as mothering enabled incarcerated mothers to maintain their identities as mothers despite their separation from their children. However, these practices could also be poor substitutes for spending time with children and did not necessarily reflect the reality of women’s lives outside of jail. These ways of doing mothering from afar were also a form of social control for the penal institution, as these mothering behaviors were consistent with being a good inmate.     

Legal Representation in the Juvenile Dependency System: Travis County,Texas’ Parent Representation Pilot Project

This study examines outcomes related to a parent representation pilot program in Travis County, Texas. Participation in the pilot program was related to earlier attorney appointment, a higher percentage of attorney presence across the life of the case, and a higher percentage of permanent outcomes for children. Parents’ percentage of presence at hearings across the life of the case was related to the child being returned home, dismissal of the juvenile dependency petition, and permanent management conservatorship. Early attorney appointment (i.e., less than 10 days from the initial hearing to full appointment) was related to permanent case outcomes.     

美国青少年法院的形成与发展

美国的青少年法院在预防青少年犯罪,打击和保护美国青少年群体中起到了重要作用,具有重要意义。文章将系列介绍美国从十九世纪起,至二十世纪九十年代,青少年法院建立及发展的情况,并通过经典案例分析了早期青少年法院存在的司法程序问题,以及各时期美国涉及有关打击青少年犯罪政策变化。