Research on the safety and victimization of older prisoners has been limited. This study examines quantitative and qualitative victimization data gathered from face-to-face interviews with 65 male prisoners (ages 50 and above) confined in a state-level prison system. Both victimization rates and narrative descriptions of psychological, property, physical, and sexual inmate-on-inmate episodes are presented. Content analyses suggest that younger prisoners victimize older prisoners and that a majority of older prisoners support the use of age-segregated living arrangements to prevent victimization. Future research is needed to address methodological limitations of this study and others.

This article examines data from a 1991 national public opinion survey on attitudes toward juvenile crime/justice. Specifically, it explores the relationship between demographic variables and opinions toward trying juveniles in adult courts, giving them adult sentences, and sentencing them to adult prisons. The findings indicate that a majority of typical respondents favor trying juveniles in adult courts for serious felonies. Additionally, punitive attitudes toward juveniles decrease up to a certain age, usually around 50, and then increase. Findings also show that African-American parents are more supportive of punitive juvenile justice policies than other racial/ethnic groups with and without children.

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Violence prevention programs that aim to ameliorate or eliminate schoolbased violence (student-on-student victimization) often assume that students, like adults, regard school-based violence as aversive, harmful, problematic, and without any redeeming value. Nonetheless, students may experience violence as fun or enjoyable at school, and they may not see a reason to prevent violence if it brings them joy on some level. This study examined qualitative data from 30 face-to-face interviews with students (grades 6-8) in a single middle school. Content analyses clarified the social contexts in which students experience violence as fun, not fun, or a mixture of both. The results suggested that 70% of all sampled students reported enjoyable experiences with school-based violence. Conclusions examined the implications of these findings for prevention programs; future research is needed to correct for the methodological limitations of this study and others.

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