The expansion of drug courts into numerous additional jurisdictions continues at a rapid pace. Despite this, and the commensurate growth of drug court literature, there remains a surprising paucity of empirical studies that test and develop an underlying theory for drug court. This research is an empirical study that analyzes and tests therapeutic jurisprudence as the theory behind the drug court mission and its day-to-day operations. A logit model is used to assess the strength of specific theoretical components on an offender's ability to complete the drug court program. The findings indicate, among other things, that the manner of interactions between the judge and offenders can increase the likelihood of an offender's ability to remain abstinent and stay engaged in treatment for the duration of the drug court program.

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Prison wardens manage both external pressures and internal challenges that affect work-related stress. Using data from a national survey of prison wardens, we examined the impact of conflicting job expectations, workload, and job autonomy on work-related stress among prison wardens. The ordered logistic regression results showed a significant and positive relationship between conflicting job expectations and work-related stress. The results also showed a significant and positive relationship between unmanageable workloads and stress on the job. We found a negative and significant relationship between job autonomy and work-related stress, though the relationship was relatively weak. The importance of this study lies in its ability to help isolate factors that affect job stress among prison wardens, which in turn may produce better organizational support, management, and human resources policy to improve conditions for prison wardens, staff, and inmates.

While few variables have been studied with greater frequency than job satisfaction, outcomes have largely reflected ambiguous and inconsistent findings. To advance empirical knowledge as it relates to job satisfaction in corrections, this research design addresses a number of shortcomings prevalent in extant correctional literature. In that regard, it uniquely focuses on the rarely explored work environment of jails in the United States, incorporates a nationwide target population, includes both personal and organizational variables in the analysis, and employs a multifaceted inferential methodology based on the strength of causal analysis. Results indicate that it is not the personal variables such as age, race, gender, or ethnicity that primarily account for the job satisfaction of jail line staff, but rather, organizational variables. These include a supportive work climate, empowerment/autonomy, and compensation/benefits, with the greatest contributor being the employee's overall work environment. Implications of the findings for sheriffs and jail administrators committed to the long-term process of elevating employee job satisfaction are discussed.

This article examines several federal and state laws, such as the Worker Protection Standards and the Florida Pesticide Law, to determine whether the goals of these laws are being achieved in the State of Florida. A survey based on questions pertaining to various laws was used to gather data on farm workers in three South Florida counties. Face–to–face interviews were conducted with farm workers in Palm Beach and Indian River counties, Florida, in 1997 and in Collier County, Florida, in 1999. Overall, the findings indicate that farm workers in South Florida have been exposed to pesticides through direct or indirect spraying. The findings of the study reveal that federal and state laws—currently in place to protect the workers from pesticide exposure—are not effectively implemented, and farm workers are uninformed of the laws that exist to protect them from pesticide exposure. The study concludes with policy recommendations that will improve the implementation and enforcement of the current laws, which are designed to protect farm workers from pesticide exposure.