The Effect of Treatment Completion on Recidivism Among TASC Program Clients

Despite the enormous resources spent by states in the United States on bridging the gap between criminal justice and behavioral health services, there have been relatively few statewide evaluations of drug treatment client recidivism. We present the results of an evaluation of recidivism outcomes for a sample of individuals ( n = 1,274) referred to the Treatment Accountability for Safer Communities (TASC) program in North Carolina from 2007 to 2008. The methodology accounted for both client and offense characteristics drawn from TASC, court, and corrections records. Multivariate analyses indicated that program completion is the most important predictor of re-arrest in the 3-year follow-up period, followed by a number of protective and risk factors. More specifically, being female, older at the time of program entry, as well as higher levels of educational attainment decreased the odds of re-arrest, whereas using crack/cocaine increased the odds of re-arrest. Suggestions for future research and policy implications are provided.

Intimate Partner Violence and Social Isolation Across the Rural/Urban Divide

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive social problem that affects victims, families, and communities. Beginning with the acknowledgment of this phenomenon as a social problem, investigations have attempted to answer questions regarding the extent, prevalence, and the possible contributing social and psychological factors that influence this behavior. This study proposes an approach to the problem of IPV based on a unifying concept: social isolation. The authors argue that the utility of the concept of social isolation lies in its ability to encapsulate critical social-structural and social-psychological correlates of IPV. The main objective of the study is to examine the extent to which the role of social isolation in predicting IPV varies by urban/rural context. Measures of key variables were obtained from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households and the 1990 census. Results of multivariate analyses indicate that only some measures of social support (isolation) are statistically significant and only for families within rural (nonmetropolitan) counties.