This study evaluated the planning, implementation, and preliminary outcomes of a US Bureau of Justice Assistance funded justice mental health focused reentry program for offenders with co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders detained in a county jail in central coastal Florida, the Flagler County Detention Center’s award-winning SMART Program. A mixed methods evaluation strategy included qualitative data collection through site-based interviews and observation to assess services delivery toward program fidelity demonstration and statistical analysis of program outcomes using a quasi-experimental design. Qualitative data revealed structural and contextual variables that presented program implementation and fidelity challenges and quantitative analysis revealed that treatment group participants were significantly less likely than the comparison group to be re-arrested during the follow-up period and less likely that rearrest was due to a new charge. Multivariate logistic regression findings indicated that none of the demographic (e.g., sex, age, race), diagnostic (i.e., MI, SUD, COD), or criminal history variables (e.g., prior felony convictions, current charge) significantly impacted the odds of recidivism. Results also revealed that opiates, heroin, and fentanyl and then methamphetamine were the most common self-reported drugs of choice among both the treatment and comparison groups.

Substance abuse and drug crime are among the nation's most pressing social problems.Widespread drug control policy reform has been coupled with an unfortunate increase in substance abuse most pronounced by the opioid epidemic and an unprecedented extent of fatal overdoses mostly associated with fentanyl and its derivatives.The COVID pandemic redirected attention from substance abuse and masked the severity of addiction and drug crime somewhat but the scope of the problem is marked by ongoing overdoses, border seizures of vast amounts of fentanyl and other drugs, and a higher likelihood that justice involved people suffer from a substance abuse disorder than the general population.In this special issue on the American Drug Crisis, we have assembled a number of original works from both established and emerging drug researchers and criminologists that examine a range of important contemporary substance abuse, drug treatment, drug control policy, and drug enforcement issues.The lead article by Worrall and colleagues explore US Postal Inspection Service drug seizures as impacted by legalization bolstered black market activity.This piece both relates a shocking degree of drug enforcement activity by the postal service and affirms that the redirection of recreational and medical marijuana drives gray and black-market distribution activity.The second article by Leban, Copes, and Velazquez critiques antidrug advertisements focused on methamphetamine abuse.Using a novel methodology, methamphetamine users were engaged in photo-elicitation interviews to understand ad message effectiveness from users' perspectives.Findings include anti-drug messaging opportunities for authenticity enhancement and connectivity.Next, Hochstetler and colleagues reaffirm the need and significance of substance abuse treatment in underserved rural areas as well as the lingering import of stigmatization as these realities vary across more resourced urban and more remote and less resourced treatment facilities.This mixed method study entailed both multivariate analysis to better understand predictors of overdose and focus groups to identify factors and dynamics associated with resilience and vulnerability to drug *

Marijuana enforcement remains a major point of entry to the criminal justice system despite broad state level reforms. The knowledge base on marijuana enforcement, however, is small and predates the current national decriminalization-legalization movement and is comprised almost entirely of survey data on officer attitudes regarding drug law, policy, and strategy, generally, rather than marijuana specifically. Focusing instead on officer self-reported behavior and expressed enforcement intent, multiple US COPS Office and US Bureau of Justice Assistance grants enabled focus group interview exploration of how marijuana enforcement has been impacted since policy reform. Data were obtained from 148 sworn officers in seven agencies across six states that indicated marijuana incident outcomes are heavily dependent on officer discretion. Incident resolution was observed primarily as a function of situational dynamics (suspect demeanor, quantity of marijuana, and impaired driving concern), suspect background, agency prioritization of marijuana enforcement, and whether jurisdictions were prosecuting marijuana cases. Decision to arrest was correlated with officers' age, years on force, gender, and ideological outlook regarding drug enforcement priorities and tended toward informal resolution in general and more so with younger and female officers. Despite national arrest statistics indicating otherwise, these findings suggest drug policy reform is affecting some discretionary leniency and nonenforcement of marijuana in favor of reported shiftwork focus on harder drugs and violence. Implications for drug enforcement and criminal justice more broadly center discussion and signal future research steps.

Studies of Latino/a/x crime and victimization have proliferated in recent years confirming three main empirical realities: race and ethnicity remain consistently linked to criminological outcomes, the foreign-born are significantly less likely to report either crime or victimization, and nativity status (i.e., foreign-born or native-born) is associated with crime and victimization, even after controlling for germane covariates. The current study attempts to expand on this literature by examining the mediating and moderating effects of social bonds on nativity status in predicting violent victimization. Using data from the Add Health study, we estimate a series of regression and SEM models to assess if social bonds mediate or moderate the effect of nativity on self-reported victimization. Results indicate that native-born Latinos were significantly more likely to be victimized compared to their foreign-born counterparts, though the effect of nativity was reduced to marginal significance after inclusion of the mediating and moderating variables in the full models. Contrary to expectations, native-born and foreign-born Latinos did not differ significantly in terms of social bonds with parents (attachment and time spent with parents) but the foreign-born were significantly more likely to be closely monitored by their parents which partially mediated the association between nativity and violent victimization.

Online drug dealing to date largely has transpired through darknet crypto-markets inaccessible to outsiders without remote site access or knowledge of trade jargon, processes, and transaction steps. Surface web search engines are increasingly driving the marijuana market, however, and apt to minimize darknet activity. This study relates covert participant observations of illicit surface web-dependent delivery services in Las Vegas' robust marijuana industry for 20 months prior to the COVID pandemic. Interaction with employees from seven unlicensed delivery services enabled exploratory insights regarding grey market advertising, transaction dynamics, industry regulatory noncompliance, and related degree of concern about law enforcement. Findings suggest that unlicensed services are masked by medical and recreational markets, maximize profit by predating upon exploitable market segments and manipulating economies of scale, and brazenly operate openly unflustered about enforcement intervention. Discussion centers on industry noncompliance and related pubic harm associated from tax and fee avoidance as a consequence of grey market non-enforcement as well as suggestions for further research.

The U.S. immigration system has not escaped the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns have been raised about policy changes, enforcement actions, immigrant detention, and deportation practices during the outbreak. In response, dozens of lawsuits have been brought against the government on behalf of undocumented immigrants and detainees, ranging from the conditions of ICE detention facilities to the public charge rule. While most cases continue to move through the federal court system, a number of district court judges have already ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. This paper focuses on three particular areas of immigration policy and practice during COVID: ICE enforcement actions, immigrant detention, and deportations. We summarize the current state of extant data and evidence on each of these and examine questions that remain for further research.

Novel and emerging psychoactive drugs (NEPDs), a research-based classification referencing a wide range of natural plant-derived substances and synthetic compounds, have garnered considerable academic attention in recent years. Most of the scientific literature on NEPDs presents definitional overviews of specific substances in terms of their chemical composition and toxicology or socio-legal commentary. This study presents a motivational typology of NEPD use derived from interview data from a sample of offenders participating in jail-based drug treatment. Findings indicate four primary motives for NEPD use (experimentation, drug alternative, peer influence, and availability) and inform discussion for additional research and policy implications.

Widespread implementation of offender reentry programming has increased justice program evaluations but few have featured research designs sufficiently rigorous to optimally inform policy. Program evaluations typically neglect program fidelity concerns to focus on outcome analysis that seldom feature optimal spuriousness reduction. The current study, the second component of a mixed-method design evidencing fidelity, presents the methods and outcome findings for the Delaware County Transition (DCT) Program, an Ohio jail-based crimesolutions.gov endorsed treatment intervention for dually diagnosed offenders. Review of the reentry and dual-diagnosis literature provides a background for description of the DCT program and methods employed to observe programming effects. Findings indicated DCT participation was associated with overall recidivism reductions and time to recidivism and orient discussion around related rehabilitative modalities.

Although exit interviews are common in business and educational contexts, they are utilized less frequently in the criminal justice system. This is unfortunate, however, as exit interviews can alert program staff to issues or areas for improvement, further contextualize and enrich qualitative data collected during program evaluations, and serve as a quality control check on original fieldwork. This study relates findings from an exit interview questionnaire administered to inmates following participation in a Bureau of Justice Assistance-sponsored jail reentry program in Ohio. Results provided support for the risk-needs-responsivity model, offered feedback to program staff, and highlighted the importance of obtaining data from key stakeholders in correctional programming–program participants.

Federal funding efforts have increased the number of reentry programs over the past decade with corresponding evaluations of these initiatives. Reentry programming targets a wide range of offenders though most have focused on medium and high-risk individuals with substance abuse and/or mental health disorders. This research note provides a profile overview of two programs in central Ohio funded by the Second Chance Act and offers a summary of process and outcome evaluation findings from both initiatives. Results from a mixed methods research design suggested that the programs were largely successful in terms of reducing recidivism among participants, though issues related to programmatic fidelity were also identified. While these programs pre-date more current offender intervention efforts, such as the Justice Mental Health Collaboration Program, identified barriers to program success reaffirm the saliency of longstanding problems embedded in and challenged by correctional and police culture.

Mentoring is a popular and widespread intervention for at-risk youth that can positively influence this population’s adaptation to stressors and increase overall resilience. Yet there is a lack of attention to how mentoring relationships work or the attributes of mentoring that contribute to successful outcomes. In this study, we employ qualitative in-depth interviews with mentors in a school-based program to learn about their perceptions of the strain experienced by their mentees, and how they respond to it during sessions. We focus on emotional regulation, conflict resolution, future orientation, and active listening - four positive coping strategies associated with enhanced resilience among at-risk youth. This study considers how these positive strategies fit into mentors’ descriptions of their approaches and the implications for intervention programming.

Developmental theories of crime and delinquency view human development across the life course with a particular focus on individuals' progress within social roles and transitions that are age graded. Developmental perspectives study within‐person changes over time as opposed to between‐group variations (e.g., between race or class) more common to sociological criminology. Developmental research utilizes longitudinal data with repeated measures to assess within‐individual changes in offending over time, thereby allowing the identification of trajectories or pathways in behavior. These approaches have identified important dimensions in offending careers, including onset, aggravation, and desistance, while also describing the short‐term changes in social roles within long‐term trajectories, referred to as transitions . This entry provides an overview of current leading developmental theories in criminology. Each theory is described and a summary of the extant literature related to the perspective is offered.

There has been a proliferation of offender reentry programs since the passage of the Second Chance Act in 2008, including an unprecedented expansion of treatment services into underserved rural areas. Review of Second Chance Act programming and observation of unmet mental health and substance abuse needs in justice settings contextualizes description of the Middle Tennessee Rural Reentry Program, a U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance funded intervention. The program targeted 209 adult female and male higher risk offenders that were dually diagnosed with mental health and substance abuse disorders for evidence based cognitive behavioral change oriented therapeutic treatment. While offender outcome indicators (recidivism and relapse) suggested program impact, barriers to implementing, delivering, and evaluating reentry programming in rural areas were also identified and orient discussion around evidence based demonstration and replication.