The Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970: Retrospective Assessments of Disparate Treatment and Consequential Impact.

Although the basic paradigm of the U.S. federal drug policy targeting the supply and demand reduction has not changed since its enactment in 1970, there have been seriously undesirable disparate treatments and impacts among various population groups. Although U.S. Congress could not define what is discrimination, it did provide two major criteria for the assessment of discriminatory practices as follows: (a) disparate treatment-basing a key decision on association with any of the five prohibited individual's demographic classifications (race, color, religion, sex, or national origin); and (b) disparate impact-correlation between any of the five prohibited demographic classifications and the key outcomes. In reference to those criteria, this article describes evidence-based indicators of national failure of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act.

A Ground-Up Model for Gun Violence Reduction: A Community-Based Public Health Approach.

The suggested strategy for the reduction of violence is to collaboratively address the problem, based on an intervention system focused on prevention, rehabilitation, and development. This strategy is capable of engaging community residents in positive ways, and it empowers them to take ownership and sustain much-needed resident commitments to achieve long-term public safety. The community residents largely insist that over-reliance on law enforcement to control violence invites further affliction among Black youth and adults.

Child Support Conviction and Recidivism: A Statistical Interaction Pattern by Race.

An estimated 50,000 parents are behind bars on average daily for child support nonpayment, but information about these fathers and their recidivism rates are lacking. Using a jail sample (N = 16,382), multinomial logistics regression method was utilized; subgroup analysis was used to investigate differential beta weights of predictor variables. Informed by Critical Race Theory, findings showed that fathers incarcerated for arrears had significantly higher rates of recidivism than other jailed men, but had an interaction effect with race. After controlling for age, education, and prior attendance at 12-step meetings, Black fathers but NOT White fathers showed significant post-release recidivism. Implications are discussed.

Male county jail inmates: a profile and self-reported human service needs by race.

With the enactment of the Second Chance Act in 2008, social workers have a greater opportunity for intervention to break the cycle of recidivism. To develop interventions, however, social workers require profiles of incarcerated people and their perceived human service needs. Unfortunately, previous research has focused on prison and not jail inmates and lacks race-differential data. In this article the authors address this gap in the literature by describing the scope of the problem and presenting a profile of male inmates and their perceived service needs by race upon entry into a major urban county jail.

Avoiding type III, IV, and V errors through collaborative research.

Major types of empirical errors reviewed by a number of leading research textbooks include discussions of Type I and Type II errors. However, applied human service researchers can commit other types of errors that should be avoided. The potential benefits of the applied, collaborative research (in contrast to traditional participatory research) include an assurance that the study begins with the "right" questions that are important for community residents. Such research practice also helps generate useful research findings for decisions regarding redistribution of resources and resolving community issues. The aim of collaborative research is not merely to advance scientific understanding, but also to produce empirical findings that are usable for addressing priority needs and problems of distressed communities. A review of a case example (Garfield Community Assessment Study) illustrates the principles and practices of collaborative research.

Saving our criminal justice system: the efficacy of a collaborative social service.

On a typical day in 2008, 776,573 individuals were behind bars in nearly 3,500 U.S. jails. Yet the potential benefits of social services in achieving lower recidivism rates and successful reintegration are understudied in jail populations. This three-year study investigated the effects of collaboration-based in-jail services and postrelease transitional services provided by the Allegheny County Jail Collaborative (ACJC). The results included a significantly lower recidivism rate among inmate participants, similar service benefits across racial groups, and successful reintegration into community life among a large majority of participants. At 12 months postrelease, participants had a 50 percent lower recidivism rate than members of the matched comparison group, who were unexposed to the intervention, and multiple indicators showed successful reintegration. This reduced rate would save the county an estimated $5.3 million annually, largely due to increased public safety and lower victimization costs. Data sources included the ACJ's historical inmate data sets from the pre-ACJC and post-ACJC intervention periods, three postrelease face-to-face survey interviews, and focus group sessions with former inmate participants and the study interviewers.The critical importance of social workers in rehabilitative efforts with jail inmates is discussed along with recommendations and implications for policy, practice, and research.

Child welfare worker caseload: what's just right?

This study was designed to establish a caseload standard for child welfare workers. Understanding reasonable workload expectations for child welfare workers is a cornerstone of quality service provision and the recruitment and retention of qualified workers. Because of the analytic complexity of this question, qualitative and quantitative methods were used.The mixed methods included focus group sessions involving 60 Children, Youth and Families (CYF) workers, analysis of more than 16,000 CYF cases maintained by the CYF information management system, and job shadowing of 34 randomly selected CYF workers for an aggregate of 5,600 work hours. The study was conducted on the CYF located in Pittsburgh. Results indicated that, on average, some CYF workers had been assigned twice as many cases as the 16 to 17 per month suggested as reasonable by the present findings.

Unveiling patterns of salary inequity: suggested measurement strategy for health care organizations.

This paper focuses on how potential race related salary inequity and racial discrimination patterns can be measured in health care organizations. Incorporating ethical principals to the measurement strategy helps conceptualize potential patterns of salary inequity. Convergent validity assessment through triangulation method allows for the measurement of parallelism, correspondence, and the affirmation of major findings. The most important benefit of the suggested strategies is the ability to assess and identify how discrimination may be occurring in organizations.