Supermax prisons have been advanced as means of controlling the “worst of the worst” and making prisons safer places to live and work. This research examined the effect of supermaxes on aggregate levels of violence in three prison systems using a multiple interrupted time series design. No support was found for the hypothesis that supermaxes reduce levels of inmate‐on‐inmate violence. Mixed support was found for the hypothesis that supermax increases staff safety: the implementation of a supermax had no effect on levels of inmate‐on‐staff assaults in Minnesota, temporarily increased staff injuries in Arizona, and reduced assaults against staff in Illinois.

Relatively little is known about the psychological characteristics of prison inmates and how recent imprisonment policies may affect those characteristics. This article examines levels of self-esteem, depression, and anxiety among a sample of prison inmates who recently completed or were enrolled in prerelease life skills courses. The data reveal these inmates to be a very depressed and anxious group with little self-esteem. Implications for further research and prison programming efforts are highlighted.

This article reviews traditional theoretical debates on the criminal law formation process and then presents an integrative, theoretical model of this process. This model suggests that an understanding of the origins of crime and justice legislation must operate on three analytical levels. These levels focus attention on the structural foundations, the actual and perceived experience of crime in a social system, and the immediate triggering events of crime and justice legislation.

An NIJ-sponsored assessment of adult boot camp programming, particularly those components dealing with substance abuse treatment and aftercare, based on empirical data from survey responses, site visits, and interviews.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties (i.e., reliability and validity) of a battery of scales and subscales used to measure Robert Johnson's mature coping construct. The battery of instruments includes a Program Attitudes Scale, a Coping Strategies Inventory, a Social Problem Solving Inventory, a Self-Esteem Inventory, a Depression Scale, and an Anti-Social Attitudes Scale. Statistical results demonstrating the factorial validity, internal consistency reliability, and the construct validity of each scale are presented. Furthermore, descriptive statistics for these scales are reported for the adult and juvenile boot camp samples at focus in this study.