International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

Sex-offender community notification legislation has had far-reaching consequences for those who must work within its mandates of community protection and safety. Increased responsibilities and greater expectations placed on probation and parole agents with sex-offender caseloads are among such consequences, This study examines the impact of Wisconsin’s notification law on these agents and their adaptation to the changes in the way sex offenders are managed in the community. Results of the study indicate that although community notification may achieve important objectives in the realm of public awareness and community protection, these gains come at a high cost for corrections in terms of personnel, time, and budgetary resources. Several issues are considered for state and local policy makers, as well as for probation/parole administrators, supervisors, and agents.

The primary sentencing options for juvenile offenders are incarceration and probation into community-based rehabilitation programs. Each model relies on different behavioral principles, punishment and reinforcement respectively, to achieve the goals of the juvenile justice system, which include a decrease in rates of recidivism. Self-esteem has been found to be negatively correlated to criminal and substance abuse recidivism in past research. The current study sought to determine the differential effects of imprisonment and probation on self-esteem in a sample of 50 substance-abusing juvenile offenders, sentenced to one of the aforementioned adjudication options. Participants were group administered the Culture-Free Self-Esteem Inventory and the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory. The results indicated that the punishment (incarcerated) group obtained significantly higher scores on a scale measuring social self-esteem than the reinforcement (probation) group. The authors discuss theories that may help explain the current findings.

The impact of the Austrian Psychotherapy Act, which, in contrast to legal provisions in the United States, does not provide for any exceptions to breach confidentiality, is compared with the effects of U.S. law on dealing with confidentiality. The authors investigated the impact of this law in light of three common situations in psychotherapy that may jeopardize strict confidentiality: treating potentially dangerous patients, giving testimony, and serving as a psychotherapist in prison. Under the strict provisions of the Austrian Psychotherapy Act, a breach may be excusable in the case of a highly probable danger, but Austrian psychotherapists cannot be obliged to serve as witnesses or an experts in civil or criminal cases, as American psychotherapists can. Psychotherapy in prison, where release is contingent on the success of the therapy and the divulging of information could be in the interests of the patient as well as the court and the public, requires a modified dealing with confidentiality.

High-risk Mexican American males were assessed for levels of psychopathy. The Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Screening Version was compared in a random sample of gang members with a matched community sample of violent non-gang members and samples of forensic and psychiatric patients and undergraduate students. Analysis involved t-test, chi- square, and Cronbach’s alpha statistics. More than half of the gang sample were categorized as low, 44% as moderate, and only 4% as high on psychopathy. The gang members had higher scores on the total, affective, and behavioral scores than the non–gang members. High scores on adolescent antisocial behavior, poor behavioral controls, and lack of remorse were found in both samples. Gang members scored twice as high as non-gang members on lack of empathy. Both samples were lower on psychopathy than the forensics and higher than psychiatric patients and undergraduates. The results provide grounds for early intervention efforts for this high-risk population.

The criminality of 100 homeless and 100 domiciled jail inmates was compared. Homeless jail inmates were significantly more likely than domiciled jail inmates to be mentally ill, to be arrested for nuisance offenses, to have more extensive criminal histories, and to have prior arrests for use of weapons, drugs, and alcohol. Suggestions for processing homeless offenders are given.

Assessing dangerousness is an essential task for mental health workers in correctional facilities. The original Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its variant the MMPI-2, appear to be among the most popular psychological tests in such settings. Two approaches to test data can be used when assessing dangerousness: an actuarial or statistical approach, and an idiographic or clinical approach. This article explores the potential for an idiographic use of the MMPI for risk assessment. Professional literature has emphasized the inadequacies of clinical approaches, whereas more actuarial or statistical approaches have been seen as preferable. This article illustrates through case examples how combining idiographic data with statistically based interpretations of MMPI scores can enhance clinical judgment. It is argued that the individual context enriches and changes the meaning of test scores. Integrating actuarial and idiographic approaches can assist in a more accurate and complete understanding of a felon’s dangerousness.

In this article, the authors use both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the experiences of offenders on house arrest with electronic monitoring. The data suggest that offenders, for the most part, do not view house arrest with electronic monitoring as particularly problematic, and most cite positive aspects of their program in comparison to jail. However, some aspects of the sanction are seen as more punitive than others, and there is important variation in how punitive offenders view the sanction. With few exceptions, however, offenders’perceptions were not strongly correlated with social and demographic characteristics. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for criminal justice policy regarding this alternative sanction.

In France, prisoners can be employed in building sites controlled by the penitentiary system but outside the prison. Prisoners involved in these special sentence-serving conditions were asked to fill out questionnaires testing their self-esteem, attitudes toward conformist and nonconformist behavior, attributions about their crime, and the locus of control. In this article, Weiner’s attributional theory of motivation and emotion is discussed. In addition to the three basic dimensions he proposed—locus of control, stability, and controllability—the contribution of self-esteem is examined. The answers given by these prisoners were compared with answers provided by prisoners in jail. The results may have implications for the treatment of criminal and delinquent behavior, because knowledge of prisoners’ attributions and beliefs about whether people are capable of changing their own behavior can help social workers, judges, therapists, and prison wardens achieve more successful psychological rehabilitation in prisoners.

A follow-up of court-referred male batterers in four cites was conducted to assess the long-term outcomes of batterer programs (N = 618). About 70% of the batterers’initial and new female partners were interviewed by phone every 3 months for the first 15 months and every 7 to 8 months for the next 15 months. According to the women’s reports, 41% of the men committed a reassault during the 30-month follow-up period—an increase of only 7% over the 15-month reassault rate. Nearly two thirds of the first-time reassaults occurred in the first 6 months. About a fifth of the men repeatedly reassaulted their partners and account for most of the reported injuries. The reassault rate for men attending a program for 3 months or more is significantly less than for dropouts. The reassault rates are not significantly different across the four programs, despite differences in program length and services.