Franklin E. Zimring

Peter W. Greenwood

This report presents the findings and recommendations of a study on effective interventions for chronic juvenile offenders. Five groups of factors are predictive of future offending: family factors such as poor parenting skills and parental pathology or criminality; biological deficits such as birth defects or learning disability; parental attitudes, supervision, and affection; antisocial and acting-out behaviours; and delinquency history. Using these predictor variables, chronic offenders can be identified at about age 13 with about 50-percent accuracy. Promising programs for chronic delinquents provide opportunities for success and improved self-esteem, facilitate familial bonds, provide timely and accurate feedback on behaviours, and reduce or eliminate negative role models and peer influences. Programs based on isolation in remote wilderness settings and physical challenges show some promise. Preventive programming for high-risk youths who have not yet committed criminal acts must take place within the educational system or community, and promising programs include early education programs such as Headstart, parent training, and some educational programs. The economic benefits intervention to both offenders and society of early are emphasized.

The Pursuit of Promising Intervention Strategies for Chronic Juvenile Offenders

One More Chance

The authors report on the benefits and costs of California's new mandatory-sentencing law, which provides for progressively longer sentences with an increasing number of prior convictions for serious felonies. The authors find that the new law, if fully implemented, will decrease serious crime committed by adults by about 28 percent at a cost of an extra $5.5 billion a year. Alternatives that narrow the law's application result in a lower benefit but an even greater reduction in costs. The authors were also able to devise an alternative that resulted in the same crime-reduction benefit for lower cost. The authors conclude that the state budget cuts required to fund the new law will be so great that it is unlikely to be fully implemented.

Estimated Benefits and Costs of California's New Mandatory-sentencing Law

Three Strikes and You're Out

Rand Corporation

This report describes the results of a research project designed to determine the potential benefits of selective incapacitation. The data for this research consist of a survey administered to approximately 2,100 male prison and jail inmates in three states--California, Michigan, and Texas. They also include information from official records for the prison inmates. Section II reviews prior research on criminal careers and then describes the survey data on which this study is based. Section III introduces and describes the concept of selective incapacitation. Section IV summarizes findings on the distribution of individual offenses and describes a predictive scale for identifying high-rate offenders. Section V estimates the potential impacts of selective incapacitation policies. The final section summarizes what the authors think they have learned about selective incapacitation and suggests the kind of research that remains to be done.

Selective Incapacitation

The Violent Offender in the Criminal Justice System

Jan M. Chaiken

Joan Petersilia

The Criminal Investigation Process

Michael D. Swaine

Sara A. Daly

China's continuing rapid economic growth and expanding involvement in global affairs pose major implications for the power structure of the international system. To more accurately and fully assess the significance of China's emergence for the United States and the global community, it is necessary to gain a more complete understanding of Chinese security thought and behavior. This study addresses such questions as: What are China's most fundamental national security objectives? How has the Chinese state employed force and diplomacy in the pursuit of these objectives over the centuries? What security strategy does China pursue today and how will it evolve in the future? The study asserts that Chinese history, the behavior of earlier rising powers, and the basic structure and logic of international power relations all suggest that, although a strong China will likely become more assertive globally, this possibility is unlikely to emerge before 2015-2020 at the earliest. To handle this situation, the study argues that the United States should adopt a policy of realistic engagement with China that combines efforts to pursue cooperation whenever possible; to prevent, if necessary, the acquisition by China of capabilities that would threaten America's core national security interests; and to remain prepared to cope with the consequences of a more assertive China.

Past, Present, and Future

Interpreting China's Grand Strategy

Peter W. Greenwood

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