The authors examine 1980 to 2003 trends in female-to-male interpersonal violence reported in Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) arrest statistics and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) victimization data. Augmented Dickey-Fuller time-series techniques and intuitive plot displays show much overlap yet differences in each source's portrayal of trends in female violence levels and the gender gap. Both sources show little or no change in the gender gap for homicide and rape/sexual assault, whereas UCR police counts show a sharp rise in female-to-male arrests for criminal assault during the past one to two decades-but that rise is not borne out in NCVS counts. Net-widening policy shifts have apparently escalated the arrest proneness of females for "criminal assault" (e.g., policing physical attacks/threats of marginal seriousness that women in relative terms are more likely to commit); rather than women having become any more violent, official data increasingly mask differences in violent offending by men and women.

Since the 1980s, departments of corrections have sharply increased the use of segregation as a discipline and management tool. In effect, segregation is a secondary sentence imposed by the correctional facility—one that follows long after and usually is unrelated to the conviction for which the person is incarcerated. The consequences of holding an individual in these conditions over time may include new or exacerbated mental health disturbances, assaultive and other antisocial behaviors, and chronic and acute health disorders. In fact, studies show that prisoners who are released from segregation directly to the community reoffend at higher rates than general-population prisoners. Policy changes that will reduce the use and long-term impact of segregation will benefit not only the staff and prisoners in these units but also ultimately the well-being of facilities, systems, and the community.

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