The increasing role of police, courts, and corrections in dealing with the mentally ill represents a significant challenge facing local justice systems. This article considers the impact of mentally ill and substance-abusing offenders in Santa Fe, New Mexico, by comparing a random sample of individuals detained on protective custody and mental health holds (n = 338) to a random sample of defendants arrested on criminal charges (n = 153). Results indicate that police encounter individuals with co-occurring disorders on a daily basis and that individuals detained on holds are much more likely than are those arrested to generate additional police contacts during a 1-year follow-up period. Individuals with co-occurring disorders also represent a serious financial burden on the local system, particularly in terms of confinement costs. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for criminal justice policy and practice.

justice practitioners and scholars have traditionally held that homicide is relatively immune from police suppression efforts. Recently, the widespread adoption of community and problem-oriented policing and concomitant decreases in violent crime have raised questions about what the police can reasonably be expected to accomplish. This article examines a joint effort by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the city of Richmond, California, to apply the lessons of problem-oriented policing to homicide work. Analyses of Richmond homicides from 1985 to 1998 suggest that the nature and pattern of murders changed notably following adoption of the new policing philosophy, and interrupted time-series analysis with homicide data from 75 other California cities suggests the changes in Richmond were unique. Results indicate that homicide prevention is a critical police responsibility and that by employing problem-oriented strategies and garnering citizen involvement, police may be able to effectively reduce the prevalence of such violence.One of us was present in the late 1970s when then-New York City Police Commissioner Robert J. McGuire was asked by reporters to explain what he and his department had done to produce a drop in his city's homicides from one year to another. Although he admitted that he had been tempted to take credit for the murder decrease, McGuire told the reporters that he doubted that the police department had in any way affected the homicide rate. Murders, he said, seemed to have a life of their own, and to be relatively immune from police interventions. In the years since, this view has permeated thinking among both criminal justice practitioners and scholars, who typically JOURNAL

Conventional wisdom about the appropriate police response to domestic violence has changed dramatically in recent years, characterized by an increasing move toward mandatory arrest. This paper examines an effort by the Vacaville, California Police Department to provide a more comprehensive response to domestic violence, through an innovative law enforcement, clinical, and prosecutorial partnership (called FIRST). The paper employs interrupted time series analysis (ARIMA) with monthly domestic violence arrest data from 1990 to 2000 to investigate the impact of the program. ARIMA results are considered in the context of more general crime trends. Results suggest that the onset of the program coincided with an initial increase in arrests, followed by a longer-term decrease. Although other potential explanations could not be eliminated, findings indicate that the FIRST program played a contributing role in the reduction of domestic violence in Vacaville.

A substantial amount of research has established that truancy is a consistent at-risk indicator of future criminality. This article studies the experiences of 178 juveniles targeted by the Truant Recovery Program, a collaborative and nonpunitive school-law enforcement effort, and considers questions regarding its impact through examination of juvenile justice and school information in the years before and after the truancy sweep. In particular, the article suggests that intensive cooperative efforts between school and police may be effective in identifying troubled youth and raises questions about appropriate school and justice system responses for children who demonstrate at-risk behavior.