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Background: In February 2021, Measure 110 (M110) in Oregon decriminalized noncommercial possession of drugs. We examined criminal legal system (CLS) involvement of people who use drugs (PWUD) 2 years after decriminalization., Methods: We conducted a quantitative survey of PWUD (N=468) in eight Oregon counties between March and November 2023. We ran multivariable models to examine predictors of CLS involvement and law enforcement stops., Results: The majority of PWUD (74 %) reported any past year CLS involvement; 67 % had at least one law enforcement stop (mean of 11.4 and median of 3 law enforcement stops) and 33 % had at least one jail incarceration. Among PWUD whom law enforcement had found to possess drugs (n=101), 77 % had their drugs seized at least once, and 63 % (n=56) were taken into custody for charges that did not include drug use or possession at least once. Younger age, cisgender male identity, unstable housing, and nonurban county location were associated with a higher prevalence of any CLS involvement. PWUD who were unstably housed had 6.80 more law enforcement stops than housed PWUD (95 % CI: 4.03-9.57). PWUD in nonurban counties experienced 9.73 more law enforcement stops than those in urban areas (95 % CI: 4.90-14.56). No significant differences were found by race or ethnicity and CLS involvement. Only 13 % of PWUD were aware that all drugs had been decriminalized., Conclusions: Despite drug decriminalization, the majority of PWUD in our study reported significant CLS engagement and limited M110 knowledge., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None, (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Individuals with serious mental illnesses are overrepresented in all facets of the legal system. State-level criminal histories of patients with serious mental illnesses were analyzed to determine the proportion who had been arrested and number of lifetime arrests and charges, associations of six variables with number of arrests, and the most common charges from individuals’ first two arrests and most recent two arrests., Methods: A total of 240 patients were recruited at three inpatient psychiatric facilities and gave consent to access their criminal history. Information was extracted from Record of Arrest and Prosecution (RAP) sheets for lifetime arrests in Georgia., Results: A total of 171 (71%) had been arrested. Their mean±SD lifetime arrests were 8.6±10.1, and mean lifetime charges were 12.6±14.6. In a Poisson regression, number of arrests was associated with lower educational attainment, Black or African American race, the presence of a substance use disorder, the presence of a mood disorder, and female sex. Common early charges included marijuana possession, driving under the influence of alcohol, and burglary and shoplifting. Common recent charges included probation violations, failure to appear in court, officer obstruction–related charges, and disorderly conduct., Conclusions: Findings point to a need for policy and program development in the legal system (e.g., pertaining to charges such as willful obstruction of an officer), the mental health community (e.g., to ensure that professionals know about clients’ legal involvement and can partner in strategies to reduce arrests), and social services sectors (to address charges, such as shoplifting, often related to material disadvantage).

Objective: The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between mother–youth closeness and stigma stemming from police contact. Background: Research increasingly indicates that stigma stemming from police–youth encounters links police contact to compromised outcomes among youth, though less is known about the correlates of stigma stemming from this criminal legal contact. Close mother–youth relationships, commonly understood to be protective for youth outcomes, may be one factor that buffers against stop‐related stigma, especially the anticipation of stigma. Method: We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a sample of youth born in urban areas around the turn of the 21st century, to examine the relationship between mother–youth closeness and stop‐related stigma. Results: We find that mother–youth closeness is negatively associated with stop‐related anticipated stigma but not stop‐related experienced stigma. We also find that the relationship between mother–youth closeness and stop‐related anticipated stigma is concentrated among youth experiencing a non‐intrusive stop. Conclusion: Close mother–youth relationships may protect against stigma stemming from criminal legal contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the scale and scope of the criminal legal system is often discussed with attention to racial disproportionalities, the fact that disabled people are overrepresented at all points in the system is less discussed by social workers. Disabled people come into contact with the criminal legal system as suspects, defendants, incarcerated persons, victims, and witnesses. Compared to people without disabilities, disabled people are more likely to experience victimization, be arrested, be charged with a crime, and serve longer prison sentences once convicted. These trends are even more profound for disabled people with intersecting marginalized identities, such as people of color, women, poor people, and those who identify as LGBTQ. This article provides an overview of the connections between disability, law enforcement, and practices of imprisonment in the United States. We provide a historical overview of the involvement of disabled people in the criminal legal system, review the prevalence of disability in the criminal legal system, and then discuss the unique ways in which disabled people are impacted by the criminal legal system. We conclude by providing recommendations for social work practice and advocacy based in disability justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most women abused by intimate partners experience a patterned behavior of abuse (by either the same or new partners), little is known about their decision making regarding whether to call the police for subsequent abuse. The current study found that 90 percent of women who had encountered the criminal legal system for previous intimate partner abuse victimizations did not contact the police for some or all recurrences. Qualitative analysis was conducted among a sample of 102 women regarding their reasons for not re-engaging the legal system for subsequent victimizations. The results suggested 5 overall reasons as to why women involved with the criminal legal system choose not to engage the system again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to look at the ways in which women's struggles against domestic violence are criminalized and also how this type of racialized, classed, and gendered violence is connected to processes that fuel prison expansion-including the U.S-led war on drugs, the criminalization of immigration, the rampant policing in communities of color, and the reliance on the police and the criminal legal system to address domestic violence. It is my intent to place domestic violence and its connection to criminalization in a politicized context for two reasons: the first is to repudiate the tendency to look at women's response to abuse as individualized or unconnected to other types of marginalization and the second is to provide a more complex analysis of how women's differing social identities or positionalities, as women of color or immigrant women for example, may affect their experiences of both state and interpersonal violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]