Each year many offenders are released homeless putting them at great risk of being returned to prison. To reduce the likelihood of recidivism, Washington State implemented the Reentry Housing Pilot Program (RHPP) to provide housing assistance for high risk/high need offenders leaving prison without a viable place to live. This study provides a longitudinal (2008-2011), multisite outcome evaluation that considers how ex-offenders in the RHPP program (n = 208), who were provided housing and wraparound services, compared with similar offenders released with an elevated risk of homelessness while being traditionally supervised (n = 208). Findings show that the RHPP program was successful in significantly reducing new convictions and readmission to prison for new crimes, but had no significant effect on revocations. In addition, results showed that periods of homelessness significantly elevated the risk of recidivism for new convictions, revocations, and readmission to prison. The authors recommend that subsidized housing for high risk offenders become a central part of coordinated responses to reentry.

The apparent utility of the polygraph to work both as a treatment and supervision aid and as a deterrent for future offending is cited as ample justification for its use. This article examines these claims to demonstrate that although post-conviction polygraph testing may have some utility by increasing disclosures of prior offending and, within specific cases, admissions of treatment and supervision violations, the limited evidence accumulated thus far does not adequately ascertain its accuracy nor support its efficacy or effectiveness as a deterrent. The article concludes with recommendations for creating a real evidentiary base beyond polygraph testing's apparent ability to elicit more information from offenders to evidence that can determine whether it is efficacious and effective in reducing criminality and deviance.

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Results of heart transplantation in infancy improve with experience. Prior sternotomy increases initial risk. Intermediate-term survival for infants with end-stage heart disease is excellent.

The presence of mental illness within criminal sentencing can be conceptualized both as a mitigating factor based on the diminished capacity argument and as an aggravating factor stemming from the perceived dangerousness stigma associated with mental illness. The current study tests these hypotheses for violent offenses using data from the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities within a weighted negative binomial regression framework. Separate analyses were conducted for male and female offenders to isolate gender effects in relation to the sentence length of offenders with a mental illness. The findings reveal that the presence of a mental illness tended to increase violent conviction sentence length reported by male offenders and decrease sentence length reported by female offenders, suggesting mental illness in the context of a violent conviction may be interpreted as evidence of diminished capacity for females and future dangerousness for males.