Participant and Program Characteristics: Correlates of Substance Abuse Treatment Participation and Prison Misconducts

Despite the prevalence of substance dependence in incarcerated populations and the correlation between substance use and crime, only 11% receive substance abuse treatment, even as treatment participation may help reduce institutional misbehavior and postrelease recidivism. The current research examined the influence of individual and program factors on substance abuse treatment participation and prison misconducts in a state prison system. Based on analyses of administrative data from 2012 to 2015 and program data, the findings support previous research documenting participant characteristics as predictors of misconducts. In addition, program training requirements significantly predicted misconducts. Implications and research recommendations are discussed.

Psychopathy as a Predictor of Institutional Misbehavior Among Sex Offenders

This study compares the utility of two measures of psychopathic traits, the Antisocial Features (ANT) scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory and the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R), to predict serious institutional misconduct among incarcerated sex offenders over a 2-year follow-up period. Archival disciplinary data for 58 offenders were classified as major infractions involving physical aggression, verbal aggression/acts of defiance, or nonaggressive offenses. Significant correlations were obtained between both measures of psychopathy and each type of disciplinary offense except physical aggression, the occurrence of which was rare in this sample. Regression analyses indicated that each measure accounted for unique—or incremental—variance in one of the criterion measures. Overall classification accuracy based on standard cut scores was somewhat more positive for ANT than for the PCL-R.