Monday, October 15, 2007

More NCJRS Abstracts, Employment and Offender Articles, Part Dos

AMONG THE LATEST RESEARCH POSTED AT http://www.ncjrs.gov/. CHECK FOR OTHER ARTICLES OF INTEREST THERE AS WELL.

NCJ 219935
Carl Leukefeld; J. Matthew Webster; Michele Staton-Tindall; Jamieson Duvall
Employment and Work Among Drug Court Clients: 12-Month Outcomes
Substance Use & Misuse
Volume:42 Issue:7 Dated:2007 Pages:1109 to 1126

This study compared employment, substance use, and criminality among participants who were randomized into either an enhanced employment intervention or into drug court. The study found that drug court participants received more employment intervention that led to maximum employment benefits and those that included educational sessions focused on getting a better job had better long-term results. This reaffirms the idea that keeping drug users in treatment is important and employment intervention may be helpful in accomplishing this goal. Participants were 500 clients (327 males and 173 females) who were in two drug court programs in Lexington and Bowling Green, Kentucky. Baseline data were collected between March 2000 and November 2002 with subsequent followup after 12 months. The measures used for the study included demographics, employment, drug/alcohol use, and criminality. Project eligibility was based on drug court program entry requirements, having a self-admitted drug problem, meeting criteria for drug abuse from the Addiction Severity Index, consenting to a urine drug test, a non-violent criminal history, and a signed agreement to participate in the program. Tables, glossary, references

NCJ 219936
Conrad J. Wong; Kenneth Silverman
Establishing and Maintaining Job Skills and Professional Behaviors in Chronically Unemployed Drug Abusers
Substance Use & Misuse
Volume:42 Issue:7 Dated:2007 Pages:1127 to 1140

This study explored factors that contribute to chronic unemployment for drug users. Finding show that for many chronically unemployed drug users, their behavioral history of failed attempts in education, job skills training, and employment contributed to their problem of unemployment. The development and establishment of fundamental work related behaviors for successful employment will require intensive and sustained interventions. Regardless of the need for job skills training and employment, some drug users are unlikely to participate in training or work without special contingencies for doing so. Additionally, without special contingencies for punctual and reliable attendance, drug users are unlikely to attend training or work on a consistent basis. The study suggests that an aggressive and long-term research program in this area could make substantial progress in addressing the problems observed among various drug user populations. A therapeutic workplace intervention used by Silverman and colleagues explored the idea that the use of contingencies in an employment setting could help sustains the attendance of chronic drug users. It also provided additional evidence that drug users in need of job skills would not attend training unless they could earn an hourly rate that was above $3.50 per hour. Participants were four female adults who were employed as data entry operators in a therapeutic workplace business. Figures, glossary, references

NCJ 219939
J. Matthew Webster; Michele Staton-Tindall; Jamieson L. Duvall; Thomas F. Garrity; Carl G. Leukefeld
Measuring Employment Among Substance-Using Offenders
Substance Use & Misuse
Volume:42 Issue:7 Dated:2007 Pages:1187 to 1205

This study examined the commonalities among a variety of employment measures with the purpose of identifying separate factors of employment in a sample of substance-using offenders; and to examine how these factors relate to substance use and criminal behavior. Findings suggest that employment status may be a better indicator of a reduction in drug use than other domains of employment with similar results found for a reduction in alcohol use. The authors recommend that employment measures should be made carefully and that a variety of employment measures should be used instead of a single indicator when examining the relationship between employment, substance use, and criminal behavior. Using employment measures from baseline interviews to factor employment status, income earnings, employment duration, and employment stability it was shown that these four measures had inconsistent patterns of correlations associated with substance use and criminal behavior. Participants were 500 clients (321 males and 173 females) who entered 1 of 2 Kentucky drug count programs between March 2002 and November 2002. Data were analyzed using work history profiles collected through measures developed at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine (Barrow et al., 1985); the demographics and substance use were adapted from the Addiction Severity Index (ASI; McLellan, Luborsky, Woody, and O’Brien, 1980); and criminal behavior was measured by 12 items adapted from Inciardi (1979). Tables, references

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