Arthur J Lurigio

Loyola University Chicago | LUC · Department of Psychology

The year 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of mass incarceration in the United States. For six decades, the U.S. incarceration rate has been near the top among all countries worldwide. In five major sections, this article offers a brief retrospective on mass incarceration. The first defines the nature of prison sentences. The second describes the cu...

This study examined the relation between paternal criminal justice involvement (i.e., biological fathers incarcerated upon children’s entry into foster care) and emotional and behavioral outcomes among children in foster care; gender and racial differences were considered. Further, this study investigated whether in-person visits with fathers with...

Divided into four major sections, this paper examines violent criminal victimization in the United States, including its measurement, rates, and trends. The focus is on aggregate assessments of the pervasiveness of violent crime and the tracking of crime trends. Also discussed are various strategies for enhancing and expanding those assessments. Se...

Background: Youth involved in the juvenile justice (JJ) system have high needs for behavioral health services, especially related to substance use and mental disorders. This study aimed to understand the extent to which elements in the cascade model of behavioral health services for JJ-involved youth are provided to youth by Community Supervision...

The authors discusses the nature and extent of opioid addiction in the United States and examines the critical role that law enforcement officers can play in reversing the lethal effects of opioid overdose by implementing opioid-reversal programs with naloxone, which is a safe, effective, and easy-to-administer drug. The current opioid epidemic now...

Juvenile Justice-Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System (JJ-TRIALS) National Survey was funded in part to describe the current status of screening, assessment, prevention and treatment for substance use, mental health, and HIV for youth on community supervision within the US juvenile justice system. Surveys were...

Presents an obituary for Eugene Cullen Kennedy, who died at age 86 on June 3, 2015, from heart and lung failure. Kennedy was trained as a counseling psychologist, but his impact went far beyond psychology, spanning 50 years and satisfying the intellectual tastes of a diversity of enthusiasts.

This study examines the relationship between a sample of 98 probationers with serious mental illnesses (SMI) and probation staff in three programs: mental health court, specialized mental health probation, and standard probation. Probationers in the mental health court rated the quality of their relationships with probation officers higher than did...

Objectives To examine the effects of specialized probation and recovery management checkups (RMCs) on participation in substance use treatment, substance use, HIV risk behaviors, and recidivism. Methods Women (n = 480) released from the Cook County Jail’s Department of Women’s Justice Services were randomly assigned to either an RMC or control cond...

Reviews the book The Matrix of Insanity in Modern Criminal Law by Gabriel Hallevy (see record 2015-34096-000 ). The book is a concise and clear discussion of a well-trodden but poorly understood topic at the interface of law and psychiatry: the origins, interpretations, and applications of the insanity defense. The Matrix provides a brief history o...

Using data from 810 women entering the Department of Women's Justice Services in the Cook County Jail (Chicago) from 2010 to 2013, this study examines patterns of trauma exposure and the relationship between trauma exposure and mental disorders. Female detainees averaged 6.1 (SD = 4.90) types of trauma in their lifetimes, with greater trauma exposu...

In the United States, jails confine large numbers of people each day and process nearly 12 million admissions each year. The estimated average daily population in American jails, as of midyear 2014, was 744,600. Jail overcrowding has continued to remain a problem at the onset of the new millennium, especially in large jurisdictions. More stringent...

This study represents the only broad-based, statewide evaluation of mental health courts (MHCs) conducted to date. Data were collected from 2010 to 2013 at each of the nine active MHC programs operating in Illinois at the start of the study. The purpose of the study was to compare and contrast the adjudicatory and supervisory models of each establi...

Kitty Genovese’s murder in New York City fueled widespread perceptions about the dangers of urban life and contributed to the stereotype of the apathetic American. Gross inaccuracies in the reporting of the story, and a short but sensationalist book written by the editor who commissioned the story, spun an enduring tale of witness indifference and...

The current study explored the prevalence and comorbidity of major internalizing and externalizing psychiatric disorders in a sample of female detainees participating in drug treatment programs in the nation's largest single-site jail, the Cook County (Chicago) Department of Corrections. A total of 253 women participated in a Needs Inventory. The s...

This editorial introduces this special section of the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, which focuses on justice-involved persons with co-occurring mental and substance use disorders (CODs). It contains seven original articles examining CODs among justice-involved populations that vary by gender, age, setting (e.g., community/ court, jail, prison...

This study disentangled the effects of intimate relationships and parenting on women probationers’ noncompliance. Data from a sample of 257 women were analyzed using logistic and negative binomial regressions. Women with non-conforming intimate partners missed treatment more frequently, had a higher likelihood of missing a probation appointment and...

This article examines recidivism among a cohort of formerly incarcerated people released from the Sheridan Correctional Center (SCC), a dedicated drug treatment facility based on a Therapeutic Community (TC) model of prison-based drug treatment. After an average of 6.9 years post-release, the SCC releasees had a 15% lower likelihood of recidivism t...

This study examined the nature and extent of probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among men in a substance abuse treatment program in a large urban jail. Specifically, it explored the prevalence of probable PTSD and other psychiatric problems among jail detainees, the types of trauma detainees experienced during different phases of their l...

Specialized probation programs were developed to more effectively address the unique needs of probationers with serious mental illnesses. Probation officers are tasked with serving both law enforcement and rehabilitative functions, and officers play an important gatekeeper function in helping probationers with serious mental illnesses avoid long in...

This article describes one of the newest, most specialised law enforcement programmes in the United States: Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) for youth with mental illness. In response to the fragmentation of behavioural healthcare services in the educational, juvenile justice and mental health systems, Juvenile-CITs (J-CITs) have been implemented i...

Chronic behavioral health conditions, such as psychiatric and substance use disorders, affect at least half of all arrestees, with two-thirds suffering from at least one chronic medical disorder. These conditions contribute to their criminal behaviors and propensities to recycle through the criminal justice system (Binswanger et al. Journal of Urba...

Background: Persons with serious mental illness (SMI) are overrepresented in the U.S. criminal justice system, and an estimated 500,000 persons with SMI are currently on probation. Probation serves as a “second chance” or alternative to incarceration, and success or failure on probation for people with SMI means the difference between community lif...

In the early 1970s, Dr. Marc Abramson, a jail psychiatrist, was the first author to observe in the scholarly literature that people with serious mental illnesses (PSMI) were being criminalized--that is, processed through the criminal justice system instead of the mental health system (Abramson, 1972). This essay examines four common beliefs about t...

Chicago’s organized crime family emerged from the politically sponsored criminal activities of Jim Colosimo, which were concentrated in the city’s corrupt Levee District. Unwilling to take advantage of the lucrative opportunities that accompanied the passage of the Volstead Act (Prohibition), Colosimo was assassinated and replaced by Johnny Torrio...

Americans have had a love affair with gangsters since the 1920s. Romanticized in novels, movies, and television programs, they have been portrayed as outlaws, entrepreneurs, men of honor, and benevolent godfathers. Stereotypes of organized crime (OC) figures are an enduring feature of popular culture in the United States and so are myths about OC f...

Background: An estimated half million adult probationers in the U.S. struggle with serious mental illnesses (SMI). Probationers with SMI are more likely to receive violations, be terminated from probation unsatisfactorily, and be re-incarcerated compared to probationers without SMI. Mental health court (MHC) and specialized probation have emerged a...

This article describes the work of the Illinois Disproportionate Justice Impact Study Commission, a nonpartisan, multidisciplinary group of policy makers, government leaders, and justice professionals that focused on understanding and alleviating the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and Latinos in Illinois for drug law violations...

A unique interdisciplinary exploration of a pressing social issue. The numbers of women offenders involved in the correctional system are quickly growing. Drugs, Women, and Justice: Roles of the Criminal Justice System for Drug-Affected Women gathers a distinguished group of researchers and policy analysts into one volume to explore the broad socia...

Changes in the availability and delivery of mental health care services have contributed to the disproportionate involvement of people with serious mental illnesses (PSMI) in the criminal justice system. Community corrections professionals have sought to address the issue by creating dedicated caseloads and programs for PSMI on probation. Specializ...

During the past 2 decades, the problem of targeted violence has attracted attention from policymakers, law enforcement authorities, and members of the general public. Concerns over targeted violence have grown in the aftermath of high-profile violent events and the perceived institutional failures that are thought to have contributed to those event...

For the past 40 years, scholars, practitioners, and advocates in the fields of mental health and criminal justice have observed that people with serious mental illness (PSMI) are being criminalized – that is, processed through the criminal justice system when a mental health option would be preferable but unavailable. Criminal justice officials and...

Chicago’s heroin trade from the 1970s through 2006 is analyzed within a global crime context. While Chicago is both a destination and a transit point in the international heroin trade, the consequences of this trade have a devastating local impact. In addressing the global heroin trade, the local law enforcement response is critical.

Issues Health Care Reform (HCR) may dramatically increase access to treatment for substance use, psychiatric disorders and chronic health conditions. New services can be leveraged to reduce incarceration and increase health status, especially among low-income, minority populations. The authors detail current system limitations, changes through HCR...

Correctional policy in the United States has alternately emphasized rehabilitation and punishment (Irwin, 2007). The current “tough on crime” era has led to steadily increasing numbers of imprisoned Americans and unsustainable costs (Garland, 2001; Lacey, 2010). Overcrowded prisons and bloated correctional budgets have drained money from educationa...

This article examines the rising number of people with serious mental illness (PSMI) in the criminal justice system and suggests remedies for improving care and services for this troubled population. Of note, mental illness is not the primary cause of criminal behavior nor is deinstitutionalization principally responsible for the disproportionate c...

Numerous studies have demonstrated that people with serious mental illness also have high rates of substance use disorders. When such disorders are diagnosed in the same person, at the same time, they are referred as co-occurring or comorbid disorders. This chapter examines the prevalence, cause, and treatment of comorbid psychiatric and substance...

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES many of the prevailing beliefs about the presence of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system. I begin by providing a backdrop for the longstanding problem of people with serious mental illness (PSMI) being processed through the criminal justice instead of the mental health system. I explore the notion of criminalizatio...

This study assessed the correlates of self-control and police contact in a sample of Chicago public high school students. The investigation examined the effects of parental attachment/identification, family structure, and peer association on self-control and the effects of parental attachment/identification, family structure, peer association, and...

This article examines the concept of recovery capital, which is based on a socioeconomic understanding of addiction. Substance abuse treatment programs, especially those in the criminal justice system, should recognize the important relationship between abstinence and recovery capital. A program is described which fosters recovery capital among for...

During the past four decades, fundamental changes in mental health and law enforcement policies have brought criminal justice professionals into increasing contact with people with serious mental illness (PSMI). This contact occurs at every stage of the criminal justice process. The police, who are the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system, in...

This article discusses one of the newest, specialized law enforcement programs in the United States: Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) for youths with mental illness. Adapted from adult CIT models, youth CITs are designed to divert and refer for services adolescents with suspected psychiatric disorders, who have a higher prevalence of psychiatric an...

We propose “policies of inclusion” as a conceptualization of current mental health long-term care policy. Inclusionary policies refer to the fact that deinstitutionalization, and all the policy changes associated with it, resulted in the forcible inclusion back into society of patients formerly excluded by institutional placement. This compelled bo...

This longitudinal study of state mental patients in Chicago investigated patient adjustment to everyday living outside state hospitals. Respondents (N = 313) were interviewed in person at the hospital and at two successive waves in the community, and a wide range of variables was measured. Findings showed that mental patients are overwhelmingly poo...

Since the early 1990s, state and federal lawmakers have enacted a range of laws and policies intended to mitigate the societal risk presented by sex offenders. In recent years, sex offender legislation has ranked near the top of state legislative agendas, and the U.S. Congress has asserted a role in shaping the nation’s sex offender management prac...

Over the past decade, two rapidly evolving areas of criminal justice practice have garnered increasing attention from policy makers, practitioners, and researchers: the management and treatment of justice involved individuals with serious and persistent mental illness, and the challenges of managing the perceived societal risk presented by sex offe...

This article examines incidents of intimate partner violence (IPV). The study involved a large sample of female victims and male perpetrators of IPV from Framingham, Massachusetts, just west of Boston. Physical injuries to IPV victims, which are sometimes serious and can be a harbinger of intimate partner homicide, were explored in order to explain...

From 2003 to 2008, Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities of Illinois (TASC) implemented the Reducing Risk: Outreach and Pretreatment for Probationers program (RROPP) in Cook County (Chicago), Illinois. The goal of RROPP was to reduce probationers' further penetration into the criminal justice system by increasing participation in substance ab...

The following special issue of Victim and Offenders, "Separating Science from Nonsense: Evidence-Based Research, Policy, and Practice in Criminal and Juvenile Justice Settings" is designed to explore how—and where—evidence- based research can be applied to a wide range of criminal and juvenile justice issues. Contributors to this special issue were...

The presumed link between violence and mental illness has long been an ongoing subject of investigation. Are the mentally ill more likely than those without mental illness to commit violent crimes? Can mental health and criminal justice professionals accurately assess the likelihood of violence? In the current review, we describe scientific evidenc...

Race is one of the most powerful variables explaining public attitudes toward the police. The majority of studies on race and perceptions of the police have explored differences between African Americans and Whites. The emphasis of previous research on black-white comparisons has left unanswered many questions about minority group differences in at...

As described by the authors, a recovery-oriented system of care for drug-abusing criminal offenders is one that provides for continuity of treatment, using evidence-based interventions at every stage as clients progress through the justice system. Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities of Illinois has partnered with criminal justice and treatm...

Youths' opinions about the police matter and can affect officers' ability to perform their duties. The relationship between police officers and youths, however, is often highly strained. Despite the importance of trust in effective police programming, little is known about youngsters' trust in the police and the association between trust and other...

This article reviews The Lucifer Effect, a fascinating and incisive book by Phillip Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford University. The book is a multilayered and compelling treatise about the malleability of human nature and the utter rapidity with which it can change from civility to malevolence. Lying at the heart of the volume is a pains...

This article focuses on a court innovation for criminally involved people who are afflicted with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression. It describes a recently developed strategy for dealing with the challenges of working with mentally ill individuals during the pre-and post-adjudication stages of th...

In response to Chicago’s well‐documented gang problem, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) established its first specialized gang unit in 1967. In the ensuing decades, the CPD reorganized its core gang unit several times and expanded its anti‐gang response through numerous supporting restructuring efforts. The Chicago experience indicates that reor...

The processing of people with serious mental illness (PWMI) through the criminal justice system is widespread and often occurs when mental health services are unavailable or difficult to access. In such instances, police, court, and jail procedures have become default mechanisms for handling criminal cases that include mentally ill individuals, esp...

The current paper, and the special journal issue that it introduces, focuses on one of the most enduring debates in criminology: whether individuals who break the law—either as children or adults—can change their behavior with assistance from professionals in the social service or correctional system. A key element of life-course criminology is the...

In 2000, a Human Rights Watch report identified Illinois as having the country's highest African American–White disparity in prison admissions for drug offenses. In response to the report, a disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) working group was formed to investigate further the nature and extent of racial disparities in the incarceration of...

A large proportion of youthful offenders who enter the juvenile justice system have psychiatric disorders and psychosocial risk factors that perpetuate delinquency, and addressing these issues has been a growing concern of juvenile courts nationwide. This study examines the relationship between the clinical information provided through comprehensiv...

In a large sample of public high school students in Chicago, this study explored gang members' attitudes toward school and the police, prosocial beliefs, and experiences with the police. It also investigated the relationship between fear of police and fear of gangs and youth's membership in gangs. Gang members were compared with nongang members (wh...

This study examines the distribution of police traffic warning citations in a large northwestern city. Warning tickets were instituted to document the exercise of police discretion in the disposition of traffic stops. The paper tests three competing hypotheses about how these citations are distributed: law enforcement, traffic enforcement, and grou...

Past studies of the mediating effects of substance use on the criminal justice involvement of the mentally ill have tended to focus on a single disorder, schizophrenia, and on violent crimes. This study examined the generality of the relationships among psychiatric disorders, substance use, and arrests for violent, nonviolent, and drug-related offe...

Examinations of the relationship between mental disorders and violent behavior can be found throughout history and across cultures. Many examples of the cultural and social construction of dangerousness and mental illness also have appeared during the modern era. This article examines the evolution of thought and research regarding the relationship...

This paper presents a case study that illuminates the clinical and practical challenges that accompany the treatment of people with serious mental illness (SMI) and criminal involvement. We discuss the historical conditions that led to the influx of a large number of people with SMI into the criminal justice system. We discuss the case history of R...

Serious mental illnesses (SMIs) such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression are prevalent among individuals with substance use disorders, particularly those in drug treatment programs. No screening tool has yet become the gold standard for identifying SMI among individuals with substance use disorders. One candidate instrument, th...

This study examined substance abuse treatment providers' perceptions of the gender-specific service needs of women in treatment as well as the obstacles that impede the delivery of services to meet those needs. Surveys were administered to more than 100 staff members of five treatment agencies that were participating in the Chicago Practice Improve...

With a population of 2.9 million people, Chicago is the third largest city in the Unites States. Located in America’s heartland, Chicago is one of the nation’s most important transportation centers and home to one of the world’s busiest airports: O’ Hare International. A total of seven interstate highways run through the city; each day, thousands o...

Individuals with SMI are over-represented in the criminal justice system. Since Abramson's (1972) seminal work on the criminalization of the mentally ill, such persons have become more abundant in terms of their absolute numbers and proportionate representation in correctional populations. Their prevalence in jails, prisons, and probation caseloads...

Resource constraints at all levels of the criminal justice system as well as the lack of a widely accepted, validated screening scale have made it difficult to screen adequately for serious mental illnesses (SMI) in offender populations. This study examined the use of the K6 scale, a recently developed and validated screening tool for SMI, using a...

At the end of 2002, the number of women probationers was substantially higher than the number of women inmates. However, much less is known about women probationers than women inmates. We surveyed and interviewed probation officers to examine their perceptions about the special needs of women probationers and explored officers' experiences with wom...

Serious mental illnesses (SMIs) commonly co-occur with substance-use disorders and, if undetected and untreated, adversely affect their clinical course. This paper describes the use and scoring of the K6 scale, a brief and valid screening tool for SMI, in a large general population sample derived from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abus...

Little direct research has examined the attitudes of police officers toward persons with mental illness. However, social psychological research on stereotypes and prejudice provides a basis for understanding officer attitudes and behavior in relation to individuals with mental illness. After discussing the growing numbers of persons with mental ill...

AIDS was first identified among prison inmates in 1983. In 2001, the rate of confirmed cases of HIV infection was four times greater among federal and state prison inmates than in the general population. This study used extensive interviews to assess Illinois prison inmates’ sexual and drug-use practices, their knowledge about HIV riskreduction tec...

The obstacles that hamper multisite evaluations in criminal justice settings can be overcome through an understanding of how the criminal justice system is organized and how it operates.

This study examines the associations among substance use and psychiatric disorders on arrests in a sample of 187 former recipients of Supplemental Security Income for drug addiction and alcoholism. Participants were interviewed at baseline and at 12, 18, and 24 months. Primary measures included urine tests for recent drug use, psychiatric and subst...

This article reviews the results of a multisite cohort study on effects of terminating Supplemental Security Income benefits for drug addiction and alcoholism. Within 2 years of the program's termination, 35 - 43 percent of participants requalified for disability benefits for another impairment. Regardless of requalification status, substance abuse...

The present study focused on firsthand and vicarious encounters between youths and police officers and the relationship between perceived police behaviors on youths’ attitudes toward the police and youths’ feelings of safety in their neighborhoods. Self-report surveys were administered to public high school students in a large urban area (Chicago)....

This study examined the prevalence of alcohol- and substance-related disorders in a random sample of 627 adult probationers in Illinois. The investigation also explored the prevalence of major psychiatric disorders and their co-occurrences with alcohol and substance use disorders. To detect the presence of psychiatric disorders, researchers employe...