Proponents of the newer intermediate sanctions argue that there are “equivalencies” of punishment between community-based and prison sentences and that, at some level of intensity, community-based programs have roughly the same punitive “bite.” There is little research, however, on the relative severity of intensive supervision in comparison to other sanctions. This study was designed to examine how offenders and staff in Minnesota rank the severity of various criminal sanctions and which particular sanctions they judge equivalent in punitiveness. In addition, we explored how both groups rank the difficulty of commonly imposed probation conditions and which offender background characteristics are associated with perceptions of sanction severity. Our results suggest that there are intermediate sanctions that equate, in terms of punitiveness, with prison. For example, inmates viewed 1 year in prison as “equivalent” in severity to 3 years of intensive probation supervision or 1 year in jail, and they viewed 6 months in jail as equivalent to 1 year of intensive supervision. Although inmates and staff ranked most sanctions similarly, the staff ratings were higher for 3 and 6 months in jail and lower for 1 and 5 years probation. The two groups also differed on the difficulty of complying with individual probation conditions: Staff judged most probation conditions as harder for offenders to comply with than did inmates. Our results provide empirical evidence to support what many have suggested: It is no longer necessary to equate criminal punishment solely with prison. At some level of intensity and length, intensive probation is equally severe as prison and may actually be the more dreaded penalty. The results should give policymakers and justice officials pause, particularly those who suggest they are imprisoning such a large number of offenders—not to use prisons' ability to incapacitate and rehabilitate—but rather to get “tough on crime.”

The nature and extent of female involvement in gangs has been a relatively neglected area of criminological inquiry. Even more rare have been investigations of explanations of female gang participation. This neglect can be attributed, in large part, to a perception that the phenomenon is statistically rare and the behavior substantively unimportant. Our objectives in this research are twofold: to describe gang membership in a general survey of eighth-grade students in a cross section of the United States and to examine differences between boys' and girls' attitudes associated with gang membership.The nature and extent of female involvement in gangs has been a relatively neglected area of inquiry (Campbell, 1991;Chesney-Lind, 1993;Chesney-Lind and Brown, 1996;Elliott, 1988). This neglect can be attributed, in large part, to a perception that the phenomenon is statistically rare and the behavior substantively unimportant. Recently, however, such assumptions have been questioned as researchers have documented higher rates of female gang participation than previously reported (e.g., Bjerregaard and Smith, 1993;Esbensen and Huizinga, 1993;Fagan, 1990; Thornberry et al., 1993). A number of recent studies also suggest that gang girls are involved in a wide variety of gang activities and are not simply sex objects or ancillary members (e.g., Esbensen and Winfree, 1998;Joe and Chesney-Lind, 1995;Miller, 1998).Recent estimates of the proportion of gang members who are female range from less than 10% to almost 50% (A similar lack of consensus is found with regard to the nature of gang girls' activities and their reasons for joining a gang. In an attempt to resolve the different estimates and varying descriptions of gang girls, Esbensen and Winfree (1998) suggest that methodological factors may go a long way toward explaining the disparate findings. They propose that ideosyncracies involved in site selection and sampling design are responsible for differences in prevalence estimates and descriptive information.Campbell (1991) laments that little is known about gang girls. She attributes this deficiency to the fact that male researchers historically have focused on male gang members (e.

During the past decade, a growing body of literature examining gang girls and the involvement of girls in violence has appeared. In this article, we contribute to this developing literature by using data from a multisite evaluation to explore the extent to which gang girls are similar to or different from gang boys in terms of their attitudes, perceptions of their gangs, and their involvement in ganglike illegal activities. Findings indicate that gang girls are involved in a full array of illegal gang activities, although not as frequently as the gang boys. Whereas similarities exist in behavioral activities and in reasons for joining gangs, gang girls report greater social isolation from family and friends than do gang boys. The gang girls also report lower levels of self-esteem than do the boys. These gender differences are discussed in terms of differential developmental trajectories for boys and girls.

Structural and process characteristics of drug courts may have a major influence on offender outcomes. However, despite the existence of dozens of outcome evaluations in the drug court literature, it is impossible to draw clear conclusions regarding variability in outcomes in relation to drug court characteristics. We describe existing approaches to the description of drug court structure and process and argue that a new approach is needed. To address that need, we propose a conceptual framework of five drug court dimensions: leverage, population severity, program intensity, predictability, and rehabilitation emphasis. These dimensions, each scorable on a range from low to high, lend themselves to a systematic set of hypotheses regarding the effects of structure and process on drug court outcomes. Finally, we propose quantitative and qualitative methods for identifying such effects.

No abstract