Exploring the Impact of an AVRS Curfew Program on Recidivism of Juvenile Probationers in Korea.

Community corrections agencies across the world have adopted biometric technologies as a security tool and cost-effective monitoring strategy. This study investigates the effectiveness of the automated voiceprint recognition supervision (AVRS) curfew program for 386 Korean juvenile probationers from the Seoul Probation Office. Although the AVRS curfew program in Korea has been in effect for more than 14 years, effectiveness of the program has not been fully tested.

Social Relationships and Group Dynamics Inside a Community Correction Facility for Women.

This article presents research on women's perceptions and experiences residing in a female community correction facility. Qualitative interview data and field observations are used to examine resident relationships, perceptions of on-site group treatment, and benefits of receiving off-site treatment. Findings from this study indicate an overwhelming feeling of tension and lack of trust among residents, resulting in most women withdrawing from social interactions.

Self-perceived health improvements among prison inmates.

Despite the extensive resources expended on providing medical care to inmates, inmates' health perception is an understudied topic. The current study investigates inmates' perception of health status while incarcerated using a sample of 136 soon-to-be released prisoners. Prisoners with poor health perception prior to their current incarceration were most likely to perceive health improvement.

Aging in correctional custody: setting a policy agenda for older prisoner health care.

An exponential rise in the number of older prisoners is creating new and costly challenges for the criminal justice system, state economies, and communities to which older former prisoners return. We convened a meeting of 29 national experts in correctional health care, academic medicine, nursing, and civil rights to identify knowledge gaps and to propose a policy agenda to improve the care of older prisoners. The group identified 9 priority areas to be addressed: definition of the older prisoner, correctional staff training, definition of functional impairment in prison, recognition and assessment of dementia, recognition of the special needs of older women prisoners, geriatric housing units, issues for older adults upon release, medical early release, and prison-based palliative medicine programs.

Patient safety: moving the bar in prison health care standards.

Improvements in community health care quality through error reduction have been slow to transfer to correctional settings. We convened a panel of correctional experts, which recommended 60 patient safety standards focusing on such issues as creating safety cultures at organizational, supervisory, and staff levels through changes to policy and training and by ensuring staff competency, reducing medication errors, encouraging the seamless transfer of information between and within practice settings, and developing mechanisms to detect errors or near misses and to shift the emphasis from blaming staff to fixing systems. To our knowledge, this is the first published set of standards focusing on patient safety in prisons, adapted from the emerging literature on quality improvement in the community.

Parole revocation among prison inmates with psychiatric and substance use disorders.

Objective: This retrospective cohort study examined the association between co-occurring serious mental illness and substance use disorders and parole revocation among inmates from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the nation's largest state prison system.

Methods: The study population included all 8,149 inmates who were released under parole supervision between September 1, 2006, and November 31, 2006. An electronic database was used to identify inmates whose parole was revoked within 12 months of their release.

Caregiving behind bars: correctional officer reports of disability in geriatric prisoners.

Despite increasing numbers of geriatric prisoners, little is known about geriatric disability or health care in prison. Although correctional officers often act as a liaison between prisoners and the healthcare system, the role of officers in recognizing geriatric disability has not been characterized. The goals of this study were to assess officers' assessment of disability in their assigned geriatric prisoners and to contrast their views with reports from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

Mental health performance measurement in corrections.

Correctional facilities have become, by default, one of the largest providers of mental health care for patients with serious mental illness. In its 2002 Report to Congress, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care has reported that most facilities do not provide quality mental health care, nor do they conform to nationally accepted guidelines for mental health screening and treatment. This article describes the product of a consensus panel of correctional health care experts, charged to develop performance measures, based on nationally accepted standards, for selected elements of psychiatric treatment behind bars, aimed to improve the quality of care.

Successful reentry: the perspective of private correctional health care providers.

Due to public health and safety concerns, discharge planning is increasingly prioritized by correctional systems when preparing prisoners for their reintegration into the community. Annually, private correctional health care vendors provide $3 billion of health care services to inmates in correctional facilities throughout the U.S.