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Combining Police and Probation Information Resources to Reduce Burglary: Testing a Crime Analysis Problem-Solving Approach

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Abstract

This research report describes the joint effort of the Phoenix Police Department (PPD) and the Maricopa County Adult Probation Department (APD) to develop a shared database for use, with GIS mapping, as a crime analysis tool within a formal problem-solving process to reduce crime. The project as originally designed included three components:

1. Construction of a shared database and integration of selected data from the two departments; 2. Collaboration of the departments in a formal, systematic problem-solving process aimed at reducing regional instances of burglary; and 3. Documentation of the above components and an evaluation of their impact on crime, using a quasi-experimental research design.

Evaluators established a quasi-experimental design to test the central proposition that database shared by the police and probation departments and used in crime analysis and problem-solving applications would support greater reductions in crime than would reliance solely on single-agency data....

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When Did Prisons Become Acceptable Mental Healthcare Facilities?

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INTRODUCTION

We can no longer ignore the massive oppression we are inflicting upon the mentally ill throughout the United States. Over a century ago, Dorothea Dix began a movement to improve the deplorable conditions of mentally ill prisoners. Despite her success in changing the country’s perception and treatment of the mentally ill in prison, we are now right back where we started in the nineteenth century. Although deinstitutionalization was originally understood as a humane way to offer more suitable services to the mentally ill in community-based settings, some politicians seized upon it as a way to save money by shutting down institutions without providing any meaningful treatment alternatives. This callousness has created a one-way road to prison for massive numbers of impaired individuals and the inhumane warehousing of thousands of mentally ill people.We have created conditions that make criminal behavior all but inevitable for many of our brothers and sisters who are mentally ill. Instead of treating them, we are imprisoning them.

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PREA / Offender Sexual Abuse

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The Act applies to all public and private institutions that house adult or juvenile offenders and is also relevant to community-based agencies. It addresses both inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse and staff sexual misconduct. On June 23, 2009, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission released and forwarded to the U.S. Attorney General its final report and proposed standards to prevent, detect, respond to and monitor sexual abuse of incarcerated and detained individuals. Based on the Attorney General's independent judgment, a final rule was published to the Federal Register on June 20, 2012. Links to the Federal Register, the Commission report and executive summary, the final standards, and other relevant documents are provided in the "Related Web Sites" sidebar to the left....

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Violent Victimization in the Prison Context An Examination of the Gendered Contexts of Prison

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Abstract

Currently there are few published, multilevel studies of physical assault victimization of prisoners. This study builds on the extant research by utilizing a nationally representative sample of correctional facilities (n = 326) and inmates (n = 17,640) to examine the impacts of a large set of theoretically and empirically derived individual- and contextual-level variables on prison victimization, including how the gendered context of prison impacts victimization. Results support the lifestyles/routine activities approach. Inmates who were charged with a violent offense, were previously victimized, were smaller in size, were not married, were without a work assignment, misbehaved, did not participate in programs, used alcohol or drugs, and those who had a depression or personality disorder were more likely to be victimized. In addition, the data suggest that 8% of the variance in victimization is due to the prison context. Prisons with high proportions of violent offenders, males, inmates from...

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