The one-state case study described in this article assesses imprisoned men’s vulnerability to sexual assault by an inmate before policies were implemented to reduce sexual violence. The cases studied were substantiated in an internal hearing procedure. On average, victims were more recently incarcerated, younger, smaller, and less aggressive than their perpetrators, but many victim-perpetrator pairs deviated from this profile. The strongest predictor of victimization was a history of childhood sexual victimization. Other predictors were race, youth, build, education, and experience with incarceration.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Brittany Hood and John Gonsler for their assistance in data collection. We would also like to thank Laura Plummer, Roger Levesque, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions which have improved the manuscript greatly.

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In a climate in which stigmatic shaming is increasing for sex offenders as they leave prison, restorative justice practices have emerged as a promising approach to sex offender reentry success and have been shown to reduce recidivism. Criminologists and restorative justice advocates believe that providing ex-offenders with social support that they may not otherwise have is crucial to reducing recidivism. This case study describes the expressive and instrumental social support required and received, and its relationship to key outcomes, by sex offenders who participated in Circles of Support and Accountability (COSAs), a restorative justice, reentry program in Minnesota. In-depth interviews with re-entering sex offenders and program volunteers revealed that 75% of offenders reported weak to moderate levels of social support leaving prison, 70% reported receiving instrumental support in COSAs, and 100% reported receiving expressive support. Findings inform work on social support, structural barriers, and restorative justice programming during sex offender reentry.

Drawing from cumulative disadvantage theory, we are the first to examine the role of transportation disadvantage among other known challenges for women on community supervision. We create a composite measure of transportation disadvantage using factor analyses and data for 362 women on probation and parole in one Midwestern state: It is used to predict arrest and conviction using multiepisode event history analysis and conditional logistic regression. Consistent with cumulative disadvantage theory, the results suggest each additional disadvantage makes women more vulnerable, over and above the other disadvantages. Transportation disadvantage is a significant and entrenched feature in criminal justice-involved women's lives. The import of modeling all available recidivism events, given the entrenched nature of criminal justice system involvement, cannot be overstated.

For 312 women on probation and parole, we used mediation and conditional process analyses to examine the indirect effect of minority racial/ethnic status on unemployment through spatial mismatch between women’s place of residence and the location of available jobs. Consistent with the spatial mismatch hypothesis, employment opportunities per capita within 2 miles of women’s census tract of residence mediated the relationship between minority status and unemployment. The connection of spatial mismatch to unemployment was less pronounced for women with high levels of transportation access. Findings point to the importance of broader social policies to support well-developed transportation systems and community-based job development.

National rates of juvenile incarceration show that about 33% of the population in correctional confinement has disabilities such as behavioral disorders or specific learning disabilities. All students identified under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) as having a disability are entitled to special education and transition services when they are incarcerated if they need specialized services. Despite the requirements for education and transition, research shows that rates of recidivism increase from about 55% for the general population of incarcerated youth to approximately 85% for youth with disabilities. This article addresses three related questions: (a) What educational and transitional services does IDEIA require schools to offer students in juvenile correctional facilities in the United States? (b) How are parents involved with the education and rehabilitation of their children with disabilities in correctional confinement? (c) What are the challenges associated with parental involvement and transition to and from incarceration for students with disabilities?

We analyze the trajectory of racial attitude change among White university students, over a 4-year time period, representing an advancement over previous studies’ use of longitudinal designs alone to test the causal ordering and nature of the relationship between contact and attitudes. Adding to the literature on intergroup friendships, we examined the impact of two types of intergroup contact (interracial friendships and neighborhood racial context) on two types of racial attitudes: attitudes supportive of affirmative action and feelings of commonality with minorities. Overall, we find that a greater number of interracial friendships is associated with more positive racial attitudes. Women and those with more interracial friendships experience a faster rate of increase in their endorsement of affirmative action policies. Individuals growing up in more racially homogeneous neighborhoods expressed less support for affirmative action and politically conservative students had lower support for both affirmative action and feelings of commonality.