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Purpose This field trial examined the process of assigning drug-involved offenders to dispositions based on their criminogenic risks and needs. Methods Probation officers administered the Risk and Needs Triage (RANT)™ to 627 felony drug and property offenders at the pre-trial stage or shortly after sentencing to probation. The RANT™ was evaluated for internal scale consistency, factor structure, and predictive validity for re-arrest and re-conviction rates within 12 months of case disposition. Exploratory analyses examined whether recidivism was lower for participants who were assigned to an appropriate disposition given their assessment results. Results The RANT™ demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and factorial validity, and significantly predicted re-arrest and re-conviction rates within 12 months of case disposition. There was no racial or gender bias in the prediction of recidivism. Non-significant trends favored better outcomes for participants who were assigned to the indicated dispositions. Conclusions The results lend support for the RANT™ as a dispositional triage tool for drug-involved defendants and probationers at or near the point of arrest. The results also lend tentative support to the hypothesis that outcomes might be better if drug-involved offenders were matched to appropriate dispositions based on their risk-and-need profiles. Directions for future research are discussed.

A simulation model for detailed micro-level examination of ongoing and proposed probation-and-parole operations was developed and exercised for a wide variety of external conditions and alternative internal-decision scenarios. We describe the system and model, report on statistical experimental-design and sensitivity analyses, and discuss implications for public policy and implementation issues. We also illustrate some general simulation-methodological practices in this application.

Direct sequencing of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) following amplification using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) [1] has found widespread use in population genetic and phylogenetic research over the past few years. Recently, nuclear copies of mitochondrial genes have been reported in diverse eukaryotic species, often confounding such research (reviewed in [2,3]). Under certain circumstances, nuclear pseudogenes can be amplified more efficiently than the intended mtDNA target, even when using as template mtDNA that has been purified by gradient centrifugation [4]. If the transfer of the gene copy to the nucleus happened recently, it can be difficult – if not impossible – to identify the legitimate mitochondrial sequence. Here, we present a simple method that can identify expressed mitochondrial genes, using the cytochrome b gene of the particularly problematical proboscis monkey as an example. Because mtDNA is transcribed and processed into polyadenylated mRNAs [5,6], reverse transcription coupled to PCR can be used to amplify the expressed mitochondrial version. This method produced an unambiguous sequence for the proboscis monkey mitochondrial cytochrome b gene; in contrast, traditional DNA-based PCR methods produced ambiguous sequence, because many nuclear pseudogenes were present. Phylogenetic analysis of the cytochrome b gene suggests that the proboscis monkey groups with the Asian langurs, rather than forming a sister taxon to all Asian and African colobines as was previously suggested [7]. Reverse transcriptase-coupled PCR should be applicable to many other cases of nuclear transfer of mtDNA, including those involving ribosomal genes.