INTRODUCTION Several studies have pointed to high rates of substance use disorders among female prisoners. The present study aimed to assess comorbidities of substance use disorders with other mental disorders in female prisoners at admission to a penal justice system. METHODS A sample of 150 female prisoners, consecutively admitted to the penal justice system of Berlin, Germany, was intervie...

The nature of some mental illness is such that persons affected by their conduct endangering life, health and safety, as well as life, health and safety of others from their surroundings. These persons, because of their mental condition, are often unable to properly assess their own interest. Because of the above it is permitted for these persons, under certain circumstances, to be forcibly hos...

In repeated matching games trigger strategies and simple optimal penal codes are not equilibria unless strong informational assumptions are made. If only local information is used by the strategy and other weak information ‡ows are allowed both strategies fail.

The growth of the prison system over the last three decades represents a critical institutional intervention in the lives of American families. The massive buildup in the size of the penal population has not been due to large scale changes in crime or criminality. Instead, a host of changes at the local, state, and federal levels with respect to law enforcement and penal policy are implicated i...

The growth of prisons and jails over the last thirty years transformed the social experience of American poverty. Penal confinement became commonplace for poor men of working age. Incarceration added to the unstable home life of poor children and their mothers, whose own imprisonment rates had also grown rapidly. Loı̈c Wacquant’s Prisons of Poverty (in part, first published in French in 1999) ca...