Corrections Today articles from February 1999

Corrections Today archives from February 1999

The criminal mind: a challenge to corrections.(Editorial)
February 1, 1999... Our obligation is to continue to try to find the answer to the age-old question of why certain individuals are intent on harming themselves and their fellow human beings. In today's society, the public seems fascinated by the criminal...

Classifying and assessing offenders: understanding the criminal mind.
February 1, 1999... There is no "one size fits all" approach. Offender assessment and classification are multifaceted, and often require multiple techniques and tools. During the past 20 years, there have been important new strides in classifying and...

Demonstrating the viability of telemedicine in correctional health care.
February 1, 1999... Prisons are responsible for providing health care and appropriate medical treatment to persons in their custody. The delivery of health care to inmates is a demanding, costly responsibility for prison systems and often presents a threat to the...

Close call teaches valuable lesson.(profile on Maureen Burris, staff psychologist at Federal Bureau of Prisons)
February 1, 1999... Best in the Business Maureen Burris, a staff psychologist for the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), began her corrections career in a treatment program for adolescent offenders. She had a master's degree, "but there was more I wanted to...

Assessing criminal thinking: attitudes and orientations influence behavior.
February 1, 1999... Social science research on attitudes predicting behavior has been progressing rapidly in recent decades. Attitudes and thinking patterns have proved predictive of voting behavior and purchasing behavior, as well as positive and negative social...

Predictors of recidivism in serious female offenders: Canada searches for predictors common to both men and women.
February 1, 1999... Until the past decade, research concerning the origins and continuance of criminal behavior in females has been virtually absent from social science literature, so that the development of theories of female offending has occurred in an...

Not a laughing matter: cognitive training, not excuses is needed for sex offenders.(includes related articles)
February 1, 1999... "If you don't give it to me, I'll take it." "He/she asked for it." No, these are not examples of children arguing. They are, rather, actual excuses made by sex offenders of all ages for their acts. Anyone who works with sex offenders has heard...

When programs "don't work" with everyone: planning for differences among correctional clients.
February 1, 1999... "It's not that we haven't found effective correctional interventions, it's that we haven't found interventions that work with all of our clients all of the time." It's a frustrating and real observation made by researchers, practitioners and...

Criminal profiling: the FBI uses criminal investigative analysis to solve crimes.
February 1, 1999... Violent crime scenes tell a story - a story written by the offender, the victim and the unique circumstances of their interactions. Behavioral clues" left at a crime scene can provide insights not only into the rime itself, but also into the...

Responsivity: the other classification principle.
February 1, 1999... The responsivity principle is one of four principles of inmate classification outlined by researcher Don Andrews from Carleton University in Ottawa and his colleagues for purposes of effective correctional programming.(1,2) These principles are...

Changing the criminal mind.
February 1, 1999... The offender who will change will challenge his or her old beliefs and learn new thinking processes that will lead to effective and pro-social behavior. Understanding the Criminal Mind From the crime scene investigator to the...

Violence prevention and related activities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
February 1, 1999... Professionals in the fields of corrections, criminal justice, criminology, social work and sociology are often surprised to learn that a public health agency such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is involved in violence...

New "boys" on the block: a study of prison inmates under the age of 18.
February 1, 1999... The American Correctional Association (ACA) recently completed a study of the nation's population of inmates under the age of 18. A survey of the 50 departments of correction (DOCs) and four on-site interviews were conducted. This research...

The Young Offender Treatment Program.(Glen Parva correctional facility in the UK)
February 1, 1999... Correctional research has shown that young offenders have different treatment and programming needs than adult offenders. The Young Offender Treatment Program (YOTP) at the Glen Parva correctional facility in England was born out of the need to...

The new Congress: new issues/old issues/new faces.
February 1, 1999... The 106th Congress began in January. As the new session begins, several issues remain on the agenda along with some new ones. Those remaining include juvenile justice, correctional industries and victims' rights. While progress was made in each...

Building hope through community justice.
February 1, 1999... Mark Carey, director of Dakota County Community Corrections in Hastings, Minn., delivered the keynote address at the American Probation and Parole Association's 23rd Annual Institute, held in Norfolk, Va., Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, 1998. Carey...

NIC assists states with updating classification systems.(National Institute of Corrections)
February 1, 1999... For more than 20 years, the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) has assisted states and localities in developing and implementing objective offender classification systems. Recently, some states have found that their classification systems...

Turning the tables: the Safer Foundation's Youth Empowerment Program.
February 1, 1999... Visitors of the Safer Foundation's headquarters, on Chicago's near-west side, often are as puzzled as they are impressed by the agency's Youth Empowerment Program (YEP). This classroom program for juvenile and youth parolees and probationers...

A History of Correctional Violence: An Examination of Reported Causes of Riots and Disturbances.(Review)
February 1, 1999... Reid H. Montgomery Jr. and Gordon A. Crews, American Correctional Association, 1-800-222-5646, 1998, 174 PP. Correctional practitioners inhabit a world that few experience - a world in which territoriality and violence are commonplace. This...

Women and Substance Abuse: Gender Transparency.(Review)
February 1, 1999... Sally J. Stevens and Harry K. Wexler, The Haworth Press Inc., 1-800-342-9678, 1998, 277 pp. Women and Substance Abuse: Gender Transparency is comprised of a series of studies dedicated to the subject of women and substance abuse, with an...