Although much has been written about probation recidivism, studies have primarily focused on rates of recidivism and the characteristics of probationers who succeed or fail. Few studies have examined the types or seriousness of violations that probationers commit while on probation. This article examines the rates and timing of technical violations versus new criminal offenses that probationers commit while under probation supervision. Factors related to the commission of these two types of violations are also examined. Findings indicate that most probation violations were for technical reasons, and a significant proportion were committed during the first 3 months of probation. Few probationers committed new crimes while on probation, and these were often committed later in the probation period. Findings also reveal that certain characteristics of probationers were predictive of early technical and new criminal violations. Implications are discussed.

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During the past decade, court-ordered diversion and treatment procedures have proliferated in response to the problems of court congestion and prison overcrowding. Underlying these court orders are stiff sanctions that are often used to threaten offenders to comply with the court's mandate. Given the widespread use of court orders and their stiff penalties for violations, the effectiveness of sanction threats in enforcing compliance among offenders has rarely been examined. Using a sample of offenders mandated by the courts into drug treatment, this article examines the effects of sanction threat on the offenders' perceptions of threat and their lengths of stay in drug treatment.

The effects of family violence on children's aggressive behaviors have been the focus of much research. However, results have been equivocal in at least the following three areas: (a) the specific effects on aggression of child-directed violence versus child-witnessed violence, (b) the salience of family violence as an explanation of aggression when other theoretically relevant explanations of aggression are controlled (i.e., peers, attachments, or moral beliefs), and (c) the gender-specific effects of family violence. Using a probability sample of adolescents from a medium-sized city in the Philippines, this article assesses the effects of child-directed and child-witnessed violence between parents on aggressive behaviors of adolescents while controlling for theoretically relevant explanations of aggression. Results show that child-witnessed and child-directed violence are positively and significantly related to self-reported aggression, that child-witnessed violence accounts for most of the variance in adolescent aggression, and that neither measures of family violence interacts with gender.

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