Published by the American Correctional Association, Corrections
Today is a magazine covering criminal justice issues
that affect corrections officers and correctional facilities.
It regularly features articles written by NIJ staff. To
subscribe or for more information, visit www.aca.org/publications/ctmagazine.asp.
“NIJ’s Response to the Prison Rape Elimination
Act,” February 2006
The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 calls for developing
national standards to prevent, detect, and reduce sexual
violence in prisons; making information on sexual violence
more accessible to correctional administrators; and ensuring
that prisons take more responsibility for inmate safety.
An NIJ-funded study will examine rape in terms of prisons’
social and sexual climate. NIJ has also solicited research
on prevention, risk assessment, and the medical-psychological
impact. This article gives a detailed description of the
inmate culture study and outlines four more studies on prevention
and risk assessment. It also discusses what is being done
to protect the privacy of the inmates participating in research
studies.
The article is available at www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/213137.pdf.
“No More ‘Cell’ Phones,” April
2006
The smaller cell phones get, the easier it is to smuggle
them inside correctional facilities. Cell phones enable
inmates to sustain criminal activities, harass victims,
or transmit photographs of supposedly secure information.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, NIJ, and the Naval Surface
Warfare Center-Dahlgren have collaborated to evaluate the
situation and help develop a technological solution that
will eliminate or, at the very least, reduce this growing
problem. To date, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has identified
four possible technological approaches: locate and confiscate
the cell phones, overpower or “jam” the signal
with a stronger signal, prevent the phone from detecting
a signal, also called “spoofing,” or intercept
the signal. This article briefly describes the merits and
drawbacks of each solution and what future research and
steps will cover.
The article is available at www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/214920.pdf.
“Duress Systems in Corrections Facilities,”
June 2006
NIJ and the U.S. Department of Defense worked together
on the development of duress systems, such as the Staff
Alarm and Inmate Tracking program that operates at the Navy’s
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in Charleston, South
Carolina. A duress system allows corrections officers to
signal for a rapid and coordinated response during life-threatening
situations through the push of a portable or mounted button.
This article explains the types of duress systems—panic
button alarm, identification alarm, and identification/location
alarm—and their limitations. It also identifies various
factors administrators should consider when choosing a system.
The article is based on NIJ’s In Short: Duress
Systems in Corrections Facilities (NCJ 205836).
The article is available at www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/214921.pdf.
“Brief Mental Health Screening for Corrections
Intake,” August 2006
Correctional administrators need to be able to identify
mentally ill detainees, who can become disruptive and/or
a threat to themselves and others. Unfortunately, current
mental health screens are inconsistent, expensive, time-consuming,
and unreliable. Recently, NIJ funded the development of
a standardized mental health screen that is brief, economical,
and effective, and can be administered with little training
at detainee intake. Researchers created two screens: the
Correctional Mental Health Screen and the Brief Jail Mental
Health Screen. Both are free, take less than 5 minutes,
and detect various levels of mental illness. The authors
take an in-depth look at how the researchers designed and
validated each screening questionnaire and offer suggestions
from existing research on how to improve and ensure the
tools’ accuracy.
The article is available at www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/215592.pdf.
