Criminal Justice and Behavior

A confederate interacted with shoppers in a supermarket in a friendly or rude manner. She then shoplifted an item in full view of each shopper. Subjects' reporting of the crime was not affected by the interaction, suggesting the act of reporting was not one of retribution for the subject. Other factors that may influence crime reporting are discussed, as well as possible reasons why results of this study conflict with previous role-playing findings.

Presently, California's Community Treatment Project (CTP) may be granted its claim of relative success in rehabilitating "neurotic" male delinquents. But earlier, more extensive, success claims by CTP researchers have been justifiably questioned by outside researchers. The present findings provide a possible reason for the limited success of CTP. With the data from Jesness's Preston study, Costner's multiple indicator procedure, and stepwise multiple regression, there is no evidence that competence in interpersonal relations and social maturity are important in I-level classification. But intelligence and moral orientation explain substantial amounts of the variance in I-level. These findings are contrary to the emphasis in CTP and in I-level theory, the basis of CTP.

Webster Hall, a community-based residential program for adjudicated adolescent females, is described. A behavioral approach was employed in successfully demonstrating the systematic mobilization of various components of a community in order to facilitate specific academic and social behavior change. Through a contingent feedback network including Webster Hall, the community public schools, the youths' guardians, and the community as a whole, it was possible to achieve desirable behavior necessary for effective community functioning. A descriptive functional analysis of elements of the community relative to individual behavior change is discussed.

In recent years there has been a move away from the traditional institutionalization of deviant members of society and a step toward community-based treatment models. The present paper summarizes and analyzes one such community-based treatment facility for predelinquent boys. Three distinguishing features of the Achievement Place program are elaborated on in some detail: (1) the utilization of a token economy point system as a primary therapeutic tool, (2) the development of a series of well-controlled experiments enabling the establishment of functional relationships across behaviors, and (3) the training of teaching-parents. A variety of target behaviors are systematically reviewed. Overall evaluation of the Achievement Place program is undertaken in light of a number of issues considered relevant to scientific investigation. Recommendations are made for continued research to define more clearly the parameters of the existing model.

The paper discusses basic operations research techniques to build models for optimization problems and some of the difficulties encountered in applying these techniques to address correctional problems, and indicates some possible areas in the criminal justice system that can be explored using these methods. It briefly reviews four different correctional projects that are currently being undertaken by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Correction. Most of these projects use linear programming and integer linear programming methods.