This article reviews The Lucifer Effect, a fascinating and incisive book by Phillip Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford University. The book is a multilayered and compelling treatise about the malleability of human nature and the utter rapidity with which it can change from civility to malevolence. Lying at the heart of the volume is a painstaking chronology of the Stanford Prison Experiment, a case study that illustrates the overriding "power of the situation" to transform "good citizens" into "evil doers." The book's most valuable contributions are the parallels Zimbardo draws between the experiment and the Abu Ghraib atrocities. This underscore the timelessness of the insights generated in his laboratory that went unheeded in Iraq because of systemic and situational forces that compelled young men and women of the military to engage in wanton acts of abuse and torture. The author extracts from The Lucifer Effect seven enduring lessons for America's prison administrators.

This article examines the historical and contextual factors that are related to the growing numbers of persons with mental illness who are processed through the criminal justice system. The paper discuss five major mental health and criminal justice policies that frame the challenges associated with the mentally ill in the criminal justice system: deinstitutionalization (a shift in the locus of care from the state hospital to community-based treatment agencies); mental health law reform (notably more stringent criteria for involuntary admission to a psychiatric facility); fragmented care (little coordination between mental health and other treatment providers); drug enforcement (the war on drugs that resulted in the arrests of the mentally ill who use illicit substances); and public-order policing (the enforcement of arrest policies that target nuisance crimes). The article also presents recommendations for responding more effectively to the problems of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system.

Examinations of the relationship between mental disorders and violent behavior can be found throughout history and across cultures. Many examples of the cultural and social construction of dangerousness and mental illness also have appeared during the modern era. This article examines the evolution of thought and research regarding the relationship between mental illness and violence, from studies in the early twentieth century through the more recent MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study. In addition, the article explores the state of knowledge and practices surrounding the assessment and management of violence risk among individuals with mental illness.

AIDS was first identified among prison inmates in 1983. In 2001, the rate of confirmed cases of HIV infection was four times greater among federal and state prison inmates than in the general population. This study used extensive interviews to assess Illinois prison inmates' sexual and drug-use practices, their knowledge about HIV risk reduction techniques, and their beliefs regarding their own HIV-risk status and their ability to avoid HIV infection. Respondents were classified into risk groups based on their sexual and drug-use behaviors prior to incarceration. Compared to those in the low-risk group, respondents in the high-risk group were more likely to have used or sold drugs and to have lower self-efficacy and perceived-risk scores. Respondents in the moderate-risk group were more likely than those in the low-risk group to be young, to have sold drugs, and to have lower self-efficacy scores. The implications of these differences for HIV-prevention programs tailored by risk profile are discussed.

This article reviews the results of a multisite cohort study on effects of terminating Supplemental Security Income benefits for drug addiction and alcoholism. Within 2 years of the program’s termination, 35–43 percent of participants requalified for disability benefits for another impairment. Regardless of requalification status, substance abuse treatment participation declined sharply and illegal drug use was prevalent. Although many of those who did not requalify lost income, medical benefits, and housing, these losses lessened over time and were not associated with increased psychological or medical problems or with declines in other aspects of participants’ lives.

Previous evaluations of the Cook County (Chicago) Day Reporting Center (CCDRC) have shown the program to be greatly successful in accomplishing its immediate goals. Court appearance rates have been extremely high and arrest rates, during the pretrial period, have been extremely low. The long-term performance of program participants, however, has never been investigated. The current study examined the rearrests and reincarceration rates of nearly 1,400 participants following their discharge from the program.

This article is divided into four major sections. The first describes the factors that have resulted in persons with serious mental illnesses' (PSMIs') becoming a growing segment of the correctional population. The second explores the changing face of parole supervision and the implications of those changes for the care of PSMIs on parole. Section three discusses the prevalence of mental illnesses among adult prisoners and probationers and draws inferences from those data to the parolee population. Section three also explores mental health care for prison inmates and special programs for PSMIs on probation and parole. The article concludes with several suggestions for improving parole practices to meet the needs of PSMIs.

BACKGROUND Recently enacted federal legislation targeted at curbing perceived abuses of cash benefits for former Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries for drug addiction and/or alcoholism (DA&A) may be creating a residual population that is too seriously impaired to work owing to psychiatric and substance use disorders. METHOD Data in this report were derived from 1-year follow-up interviews of 204 randomly selected DA&A beneficiaries in Chicago who were initially interviewed between January 1997 and March 1997, immediately following their termination in the Supplemental Security Income DA&A program. Information on subjects' work and benefits status were collected along with DSM-III-R psychiatric and substance use disorder diagnostic information. Urine specimens were also collected and tested for recent use of marijuana, cocaine, opiates, phencyclidine, amphetamines, and methadone. RESULTS Twenty-six percent had a past-year severe mental illness while 34% met the DSM-III-R criteria for drug dependence. Illegal drug use was also prevalent with about 50% of the sample testing positive for marijuana, cocaine, or opiates. Compared with those working and earning at least $500 a month, unemployed or underemployed subjects who had lost all federal benefits had a much greater likelihood of being dependent on drugs (odds ratio, 5.0; P<.005; 95% confidence interval, 1.6-15.7) and of having 2 or more comorbid psychiatric disorders (odds ratio, 6.9; P<.005; 95% confidence interval, 1.9-24.7). CONCLUSIONS Those who have lost DA&A disability benefits and who continue to be unemployed or underemployed have elevated rates of drug dependence and psychiatric comorbidities; consequently, helping these cases make the transition from government assistance to sustained employment is increasingly difficult.

The prevalence of psychiatric disorders was examined in a sample of 204 pretrial jail detainees receiving standard drug treatment. More than half of the sample had at least one lifetime DSM-III-R axis I diagnosis, and the lifetime rates of serious mental illness were higher than reported prevalence rates for arrestees in general jail populations. Detainees with comorbid disorders were more likely than others to have more than one co-occurring psychiatric disorder, to have been arrested for property crimes, and to be dependent on alcohol, marijuana, or PCP. The findings argue for the expansion of integrated treatment services within criminal justice drug treatment settings.

A federal demonstration project in the Cook County Jail, called IMPACT (Intensive Multi-phased Program of Assessment and Comprehensive Treatment), provided residential drug-user treatment to more than 3,000 inmates during its 5 years of operation between January 1991 and October 1995, In that time, much was learned about initiating and conducting a complex, intensive, longer-term drug-user-treatment program in a jail setting. This article describes IMPACT and summarizes the results of a process and an outcome evaluation of the program and a series of focus groups. Based on these studies, we recommend ways to improve the design and implementation of drug-user treatment programs in jails.

This article explores the correlates of immediate and short-term psychological distress among victims of burglary, robbery, and nonsexual assault. A panel design was employed. Crime victims were interviewed within 1 month following the incident and again 3 months later. Four sets of predictors were examined: demographics, previctimization adjustment and stress, features of the crime incident, and victims' perceptions. Measures of distress included a range of standard indices of adjustment and symptomatology. Demographic characteristics and victim perceptions accounted for the greatest proportions of variance in the outcome measures at Time 1 and Time 2. The strongest predictors of psychological adjustment at the end of 3 months included adjustment after 1 month, education, victim injury, victims' beliefs that their lives had been endangered during the crime episode, and victims' appraisals of the world as meaningful. Implications for treatment and directions for future studies are discussed.

This study examined the effects of a drug treatment program in Chicago's Cook County Jail (CCJ). The program, known as the Integrated Multiphase Program of Assessment and Comprehensive Treatment (IMPACT), involves three agencies and is based on the general model of a modified therapeutic community. IMPACT significantly reduced rearrest rates and delayed time-to-rearrest for program participants. Outcomes improved as length of stay in the program increased up to 150 days, after which there were no further reductions in recidivism. In addition, community treatment significantly reduced rearrest rates even for inmates who stayed an optimal length of time in the program.

This article examines public opinion about court dispositions in domestic violence cases. Adult residents in Georgia were asked to respond to short scenarios involving their spouses and intimate partners. The scenarios were varied on three factors: the intentionality of harm, the presence of injury, and a history of injury in previous domestic disputes. Participants preferred dismissal when, according to the scenario their spouses acted unintentionally and when they did not receive injuries in the current dispute. Women and men preferred counseling significantly more than they wanted jail or probation. Also, women preferred jail and counseling more than men. The most preferred disposition overall was court-ordered mediation.