Frank R. Scarpitti

FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH COMPLETION OF A DRUG TREATMENT COURT DIVERSION PROGRAM

Factors related to successful completion of a first offender diversion program were examined from initial data of a longitudinal study of drug treatment court outcomes in Delaware. The strongest predictors of success were factors associated with social stakeholder values, especially those involving employment. Other factors associated with program completion included race, education, and frequency of drug use. While the overall success of drug treatment courts continues to be documented, these data suggest success varies with individual characteristics. The continuing study will explore whether these characteristics are also related to subsequent outcomes, especially drug use relapse and criminal recidivism, over a 24-month post-treatment period.

Female Delinquency: An Application of Self and Opportunity Theories:

Since most theories of delinquency explicitly or implicitly deal with males, most of the research bearing upon these theories has concerned males with very little attention given to females. The intent of this paper is to apply to females two delinquency theories which have been found empirically useful in explaining male delinquency: self and opportunity theories. The data show that delinquency and self-concept are related for black females but unrelated for white females. Weak empirical support is found for the contention that repeated delinquency among females is not buttressed by subcultural support. It is found that both black and white female delinquents regard their opportunities less positively than do their non-delinquent counterparts, and that perceptions of opportunity are lowest among public policy offenders. It is suggested that the sexual behavior implied by public policy offenses may represent an attempt to fulfill the marital goal or, conversely, a rejection of it.

Schizophrenics in the community : an experimental study in the prevention of hospitalization

This highly successful book gives students a brood understanding of the nature, origins, development, and problems of a modern industrial society. Material from anthropology, psychology, sociology, economics, and political science is used where appropriate. The book has been thoroughly updated with much of the material rewritten to reflect new areas of interest such as economic growth, race relations, and international relations. Recent events such as the 1964 tax revision and the war on poverty are discussed in some detail. Two-thirds of the illustrations are new; a bibliography is included at the end.

Violent Offenders in Drug Court

Drug courts are slowly beginning to expand their admission criteria to include more chronic and serious offenders since traditional probation and incarceration have failed to prevent drug use and crime. Drug courts have moved from providing diversion programs for first-time offenders charged with drug possession to developing tracks for more complex clients. Many of these new drug court participants have extensive criminal histories, including histories of violent crime. Drug court decision-makers thus confront the difficulty of balancing the needs of treatment versus corrections by attempting to target offenders whose criminal histories suggest that their candidacy in a drug court would not pose a risk to public safety. To date, little is known about whether drug courts are appropriate for offenders with lengthy criminal histories that often include violence. The research presented here explores correlates of drug court graduation for seriously crime-involved offenders, most of whom have a history of violence.

An Intensive Case Management Approach for Paroled IV Drug Users

The need for drug abuse treatment to reduce recidivism in prison systems has led to increasing interest in treatment alternatives for correctional clients. The research on the effectiveness of treatment alternatives, however, has lagged behind the interest in and implementation of new programs. This article reports on early findings from an ongoing longitudinal study of the efficacy of an intensive case management approach, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), for treating parolees with past drug problems, compared with a group of parolees who were not offered this treatment program. Using follow-up data on 135 subjects interviewed at release from prison and then reinterviewed about six months later, the ACT group and comparison group are examined in terms of recidivism and relapse to drug use. Bivariate analyses suggest little difference between the two groups. Multivariate analyses, however, suggest several important variables that were not manipulated in this “quasi-experiment,” but are predictive of relapse and recidivism. Although the limited sample size available at present precludes any definitive conclusions, discussion focuses on the direction of findings and highlights the necessity for multivariate controls in assessing the effectiveness of any intervention with criminal justice clients.

Juvenile Court Dispositions Factors in the Decision-making Process

This article discusses the decision-making process of juvenile court judges and, more specifically, the factors associated with judicial decisions. Data were gathered over a three-year period on 1,210 adjudicated delinquents and included social background and delinquency history information, as well as scores on a stand ard personality inventory. The correctional facilities to which boys were assigned represent a rough continuum ranging from the minimal supervision of probation to the full confinement of a state reformatory. The general pattern of distribution is one in which the proportions of boys who are likely to be more disad vantaged, more delinquent, and more psychologically atypical increase from probation to the reformatory. To the extent that the programs are organized progressively to treat youths increas ingly more delinquent or possessing characteristics usually associ ated with delinquency risk, the court appears to be making effec tive dispositions.

Integrating the therapeutic community and work release for drug-involved offenders: The CREST program☆

As the nations first therapeutic community (TC) and work release center for drug involved offenders, CREST combines the basic elements of both modalities into an effective agent for behavioral change. This article explores the ways in which these elements are integrated and applied, and the outcome of such treatment as determined by subsequent substance abuse and criminal activity. Clients entering the program from prison progress through several phases of counseling, group interaction, confrontation, and education before they enter the work release phase, where they gain realistic experience and can implement what they learned in the TC concerning living drug free. Follow-up data collected at 6 and 18 months after entry into the program indicate that CREST clients have significantly lower relapse and recidivism rates than a comparable comparison group. CREST has similar effects on relapse and recidivism across sexes, racial/ethnic groups, and different age categories, although length of time in treatment and whether clients graduated do impact outcome variables.

Crime in Atlantic City: Do casinos make a difference?

In November, 1976 a constitutional referendum in the state of New Jersey legalized casino gaming. This paper examines the impact of this action on crime in Atlantic City, the only location in the state where gambling is permitted. More specifically, the analysis looks at the incidence of FBI index crimes in that jurisdiction in two basic ways. First, the work examines the raw numbers and rate of crime in the city, both before and after the introduction of casino gambling. Although the analysis establishes that the raw figures show that there has been a significant increase in index crimes, it is argued that using these statistics as a measure of crime in Atlantic City is misleading because they fail to take into account the numerous visitors to the city when calculating the population‐at‐risk and because they do not differentiate between crime that occurs in the community and that which occurs in the casinos. The second phase of the analysis addresses these issues through the use of adjusted populations a...

Examining the criminal justice and criminological paradigms: An analysis of ACJS and ASC members

Many authors have noted the existence of dual paradigms operating in crimerelated education, including those who generally study crime as a social phenomenon (criminologists) and those concerned with agencies that have been designed to deal with crime (criminal justicians). In an effort to determine the exten of convergence and divergence between these groups, we examine the characteristics of members of their respective professional associations, the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Using bivariate statistics and discriminant function analysis, we find a number of expected divergences between these groups. In addition, however, we provide a detailed examination of recent convergences suggesting the evolution of a new paradigm, one which incorporates salient features of both criminology and criminal justice.

Delinquency Prevention A Description and Assessment of Projects Reported in the Professional Literature

This paper seeks to solve some of the practical problems associated with describing and assessing efforts at delinquency prevention. Following a search of the professional literature, previous efforts are described and evaluative criteria are sug gested and then applied. The conclusion drawn is that it is unlikely that any of these projects successfully prevented delinquent behavior. Several explanations and possible solu tions are then offered.