News

Partnerships: Coming Together to Study Crime & Solutions
NIJ Director John H. Laub, Washington, D.C.
June 6, 2011

 

Trends and issues in crime and criminal justice. no.427

"It is commonly believed that prisons do not typically provide environments that are conducive to successful rehabilitation. Research consistently identifies ways in which the institutional social “climate” can act in counter-therapeutic ways. However, it has proven difficult to operationalise what is meant by constructs such as climate, culture and milieu, and as a result, research in this area has been hampered by the absence of a suitable method to reliably measure the climate of a particular institution. This research is based on the premise that the social climate of a prison will exert a profound influence on rehabilitative outcomes and the study operationalizes and reports on the validation of a brief measure of social climate in two Australian prisons  - the Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES). Participants in the study were drawn from the population of prisoners (n=144) and staff members (n=109) at two correctional settings based in one Australian state. One is a therapeutically focused medium security institution that offers intensive rehabilitation for sex offenders, violent offenders and those with drug and alcohol problems. The other is a minimum to medium security prison that accommodates predominantly mainstream prisoners and offers violent offender and substance use rehabilitation programs. The research gives further support for the idea that the social climate of a prison can influence rehabilitative outcomes. There would appear to be significant therapeutic opportunities that arise through attending closely to the social functioning and interactions of both staff and prisoners in institutional settings. This study has identified the means by which a prison social climate can be assessed and it is recommended that the EssenCES measure is routinely used to audit the social climate of a prison or prison unit on an annual basis, such that changes over time can be assessed, standards and targets set, and the need for additional resources or interventions identified and responded to. Further research is required to establish how a social climate might be modified or changed in a way that would enhance rehabilitative outcomes."

Host`s name: National Criminal Justice Assoc. (NCJA) :

Description: "Using Evidence Informed Principles in Juvenile Justice: Lowering Recidivism, Reducing Secure Detention and Promoting Positive Youth Development will showcase concrete examples of how state level programs are helping to improve long and short term outcomes within state level juvenile justice systems and the populations they serve. This webinar will look at both how policy changes related to status offenders have impacted secure detention and how evidence driven approaches to juvenile justice can make communities safer, save taxpayers money and allow for more prudent allocation of scarce resources. The presenters for this webinar include: Tara Andrews, deputy director for policy and programs, with the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, Brian Bumbarger, founding director of the Evidence-Based Prevention and Intervention Support Center at Pennsylvania State University and David Jones deputy secretary, Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention". 

"The European Developmental and Life-course Criminology working group is going digital! This autumn the EDLC will launch its website and provide its members and others interested in longitudinal criminological research a platform to share their publications, data and ideas"

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conference, is now available and will explore new economic and spatial methods of predicting, assessing, and evaluating crime.

On day two, guest international speakers, Dr Steve Aos from the Washington Institute in Seattle, and Professor Patricia Brantingham, RCMP University Professor of Computational Criminology and Director, Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser University, will be presenting workshops on benefit-cost analysis, and spatial analysis and policy. Conference registration is inclusive of the workshops.

The conference will also feature:

• Professor Peter Homel, Principal Criminologist, AIC - How do I know if it worked? Measuring the effectiveness of crime prevention in Australia
• Professor Anna Stewart, Griffith University -Understanding and costing offending trajectories: Creating an evidence base for targeting crime prevention
• Dr Don Weatherburn, director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research - The Impact of the criminal justice system on crime".