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Recidivism after incarceration is a fundamental concern for the criminal justice system. Although men remain the largest percentage of the prison population, women are entering prison at an increasing frequency. Insufficient research has looked at the influence of prison protective and risk factors on recidivism by gender or any theoretical model to consider this increase in the female prison population. Using data from a large western state in the USA, all male and female inmates incarcerated from 2009 through 2011 are evaluated in terms of protective (education, programming, community ties, relationship status) and risk factors (race/ethnicity, age, homelessness, prison conduct, gang membership, prison sentence length and type) associated with their initial incarceration or recidivism. The findings and implications are subsequently discussed.

The present article is a preliminary study using textual analysis of 35 news articles regarding media portrayals of hazing. In an effort to better understand how the media defines and portrays hazing explanations and the types of injuries victims sustain, we introduce the TAIR Model. Results indicate that the TAIR model provides hazing motivations as being the result of tradition, acceptance, initiation, or ritual and that victims of hazing often sustain physical, psychological, and sexual harm. Furthermore, many “hazing acts” are really crimes that happen to be perpetrated by members of sports teams rather than a sports hazing event. The impact of this analysis suggests that due to media portrayals of hazing, the ways in which we think and speak about hazing, as well as the subsequent “solutions”, are counterproductive and distort our understandings of the causes of “hazing”.

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Scholars have identified four primary types of justice: distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational. These four types of justice correspond, respectively, to the perceived fairness of one's outcomes, to the perceived fairness of the procedures used to determine one's outcomes, to the degree to which people are treated with dignity and respect, and to whether individuals receive complete, truthful, and timely explanations of procedures and decisions. A significant amount of criminal justice research has examined how perceptions of justice affect attitudes and behavior (Denver 2011). Understanding how district attorneys view justice gives insight into the decisions they make including how to dispose of cases, what charges to bring against defendants, what sentences to recommend, and even how victims should be treated throughout the court process. As noted by Colquitt (2001), a large number of studies have sought to link justice perceptions to a variety of organizational outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, withdrawal, and organizational citizenship behavior (p. 425). Nonetheless, the extant literature is lacking on conceptualizations of justice related to jury trials. Since ensuring that justice prevails is the primary responsibility of the district attorney (Felkenes 1975), this study seeks to examine district attorneys' perceptions of justice resulting from the use of jury trials.