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Abstract: The criminal career paradigm had essentially ignored investigating offenders in rural areas. To fill this void, a retrospective, cross-sectional design sampled 331 former adult correctional clients from the case archives in a rural midwestern state. Self-report and official records indicated that rural criminal careers were characterized by relatively few arrests, short-lived criminal justice system involvements, and a paucity of violent crime. Although the sample demonstrated relatively benign criminality overall, the most chronic offenders, top 10 percent of the sample, were plagued by overlapping, contemporaneous problems such as alcoholism, substance abuse, mental health difficulties, early onset of antisocial behavior, low educational attainment, and revolving involvement in the criminal justice system. Like rural communities, which were characterized by exceedingly low crime rates, rural career offenders tended to be relatively harmless criminals especially compared to habitual offenders commonly found in the criminological literature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: To identify changes in drug abuse control measures that would reduce non-drug crime. Method: Policy analysis. Results: Expanding current anti-drug efforts in the conventional triad of enforcement, prevention, and treatment (including drug courts) holds out little hope of reducing non-drug crime. Routine drug law enforcement risks increasing crime by raising drug prices and creating incentives for violence among dealers. Low-arrest crackdowns to break up flagrant markets promise better results. Even good prevention programs have modest effect sizes, and most prevention programs are not based on proven models. The overlap between the population of heavy illicit drug users and the population of frequent non-drug offenders presents a problem and a policy opportunity that current programs largely fail to grasp. Drug treatment, except for opiate substitution, has difficulty recruiting and retaining clients, and weak sanctions systems render treatment mandates largely nominal. Abstinence-mandate programs such as HOPE and Sobriety 24/7 have shown superior results in reducing re-offending and incarceration. Raising alcohol taxes reduces heavy alcohol use and crime due to intoxication without generating any offsetting criminogenic effects. Conclusion: Current drug policies are not optimally designed for the control of non-drug crime. Improvements are within relatively easy reach. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

While many scholars have investigated potential predictors of institutional misconduct among adult inmates, few have assessed the determinants of misconduct among incarcerated juvenile delinquents. This lack of research attention to the predictors of institutional misconduct is especially notable among female delinquents. As females have been theorized to have unique pathways to offending, it is pertinent to examine their pathways to institutional misconduct. The current study investigates potential predictors of violent misconduct among a large sample (n = 1061) of state-committed serious female delinquents in a large southern state. Using negative binomial regression models, a large number of variables were examined that describe the youths' background, delinquency history, and commitment offense. While only a few individual-level factors such as poor mental health predicted violent misconduct, a larger number of delinquent history measures such as committing a violent offense and being sentenced to a blended sentence emerged as important predictors of involvement in violent institutional misconduct. Policy implications and limitations of the study are also discussed. • Few studies assess predictors of misconduct among female delinquents. • Predictors of violent misconduct among serious female delinquents were studied. • Many delinquent background characteristics were identified as significant predictors. • Unique risk factors included poor mental health and committing a violent offense. • More attention should be paid to identifying sex-specific misconduct predictors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]