No abstract

Halfway houses are a form of community supervision and correctional programming that have become a staple intervention in recent years. Despite the ingrained belief in their benefits with respect to successful reintegration, this assumption may not be justified based on the existing literature. The current study provides a systematic review and meta-analysis of nine studies examining the effects of halfway houses on recidivism. Overall, the findings suggest that halfway houses are an effective correctional strategy for successful reentry (log odds ratio [LOR] = 0.236, z = 9.27, p < .001). Further work is needed to determine best practices for programming and meeting the needs of different participants.

The relationship between psychopathy and negative behavioral, social, and health outcomes has lead to calls to identify factors that promote change in features of psychopathy. Given that maturation has important implications for changes in personality more broadly, it also may be informative of changes in specific personality traits associated with psychopathy. Rocque’s integrated maturation theory was used in the current study to guide the measurement of psychosocial, adult social role, and identity maturation domains among boys and girls from the Pathways to Desistance Study ( n = 1,354). Based on cross-lagged dynamic panel models, within-individual change in temperance (psychosocial maturation), work orientation and consideration of others (adult social role maturation), and moral disengagement (identity maturation) predicted within-individual change in features of psychopathy measured using the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory. Maturation may influence features of psychopathy directly or indirectly through changes in a person’s social environment. Understanding why features of psychopathy change is an important step for developing person-oriented intervention strategies.

Warr (1989) conceptualized offence severity as the intersection of the harmfulness and wrongfulness of an act, which overlaps with how Canada’s justice system makes decisions about sentencing. The current study used this logic to move beyond static indicators of crime severity (e.g., history of violent offending) to examine risk factors for longitudinal patterns of offending severity over the life course. Data on girls (n = 284) from the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study were used to examine the impact of self-reported risk factors on trajectories of offence severity between ages 12 and 23 (i.e., amount of time spent in custody at each year of age). Overall, 40% of incarcerated girls were associated with serious offending in emerging adulthood; however, it was rare for offending severity to escalate during emerging adulthood (ages 18–23; n = 25, 8.8%). Early-onset illicit substance use and frequent involvement in physical altercations during adolescence predicted serious offending that escalated between adolescence and emerging adulthood. A much wider range of risk factors in adolescence distinguished between participants who demonstrated frequent offending of a less serious nature, which slowly declined in adulthood, and those who were rarely, if ever, involved in frequent or serious offences in adulthood. Substance abuse treatment strategies may be especially important for disrupting incarcerated girls’ pathway to escalation of the severity of offending during emerging adulthood.

The over-representation of crime is a prevalent occurrence in the media; so too is the under-representation of certain types of victims of crime. The purpose of the current study is to explore the role that characteristics of homicide victims play in the presentation and prominence of a news story. The study uses a sample of 3,998 newspaper articles on homicide from the Vancouver Sun to assess the relationship between victims who are cumulatively portrayed as more ‘sympathetic’ and structural measures of prominence in newspapers (placement on the front page, inclusion of a photograph, length of article). The findings reflect a statistically significant relationship between victim characteristics and prominent placement of a news article. Practical implications are discussed in relation to how disproportionate reporting of marginalized victims contributes to, reinforces and reproduces further marginalization in society and by law enforcement.