Can hardened criminals really reform? "Making Good" provides resounding proof that the answer is yes. This book provides a fascinating narrative analysis of the lives of repeat offenders who, by all statistical measures, should have continued on the criminal path but instead have created lives of productivity and purpose. This examination of the phenomenology of "making good" includes an encyclopedic review of the literature on personal reform as well as a practical guide to the use of narratives in offender counseling and rehabilitation.The author's research shows that criminals who desist from crime have constructed powerful narratives that aided them in making sense of their pasts, finding fulfillment in productive behaviors, and feeling in control of their future. Borrowing from the field of narrative psychology, Maruna argues that to truly understand offenders, we must understand the stories that they tell - and that in turn this story-making process has the capacity to transform lives. "Making Good" challenges some of the cherished assumptions of various therapy models for offenders and supports new paradigms for offender rehabilitation. This groundbreaking book is a must read for criminologists, forensic psychologists, lawyers, rehabilitation counselors, or anyone interested in the generative process of change.

Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives

羟氨苄青霉素引起大疱性类天疱疮样疹

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) constitute a class of flexible nonlinear models designed to mimic biological neural systems. In this entry, we introduce ANN using familiar econometric terminology and provide an overview of ANN modeling approach and its implementation methods. † Correspondence: Chung-Ming Kuan, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Sec. 2, Taipei 115, Taiwan; ckuan@econ.sinica.edu.tw. †† I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the editor, Professor Steven Durlauf, for his patience and constructive comments on early drafts of this entry. I also thank Shih-Hsun Hsu and Yu-Lieh Huang for very helpful suggestions. The remaining errors are all mine.

Artificial neural networks

Clinical Guidelines for the Use of Chronic Opioid Therapy in Chronic Noncancer Pain

Methadone is widely used as a replacement for illicit opioid use such as heroin in medically-supported opioid substitution maintenance programmes. Two other drugs have been used to help reduce illicit opioid use, specifically buprenorphine and LAAM (levo-alpha-acetylmethadol). LAAM is not used in current clinical practice. Buprenorphine is currently used and can reduce illicit opioid use compared with placebo, although it is less effective than methadone. Buprenorphine is an opioid drug that is not as potent as heroin and methadone, although the effects of buprenorphine may last longer. Buprenorphine can be taken once every two days. The trials include different formulations of buprenorphine: sublingual solution, sublingual tablets, combined buprenorphine/naloxone sublingual tablet and an implant. Key results The review of trials found that buprenorphine at high doses (16 mg) can reduce illicit opioid use effectively compared with placebo, and buprenorphine at any dose studied retains people in treatment better than placebo. Buprenorphine appears to be less effective than methadone in retaining people in treatment, if prescribed in a flexible dose regimen or at a fixed and low dose (2 - 6 mg per day). Buprenorphine prescribed at fixed doses (above 7 mg per day) was not different from methadone prescribed at fixed doses (40 mg or more per day) in retaining people in treatment or in suppression of illicit opioid use.

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Buprenorphine maintenance versus placebo or methadone maintenance for opioid dependence

Research involving drug users and treatment evaluations continue to rely extensively on self-reports of drug use. This paper presents a meta-analytical review of 24 studies published since 1985 that examined the validity of drug self-reports in high risk populations. Only studies employing a biological criterion of validity (e.g., urinalysis, hair analysis) are included. Coefficients of chance-corrected agreement between self-reports and the validity criteria are calculated from published data to facilitate cross-study comparisons. The median conditional kappa (kappa c) was .42, considerably below the level of kappa c = .80 that represents acceptable reporting accuracy. The magnitude of drug use underreporting documented in this review could seriously bias prevalence estimates and treatment outcome studies.

Validity of self-reported drug use in high risk populations: a meta-analytical review.

Prescription opioid abuse among enrollees into methadone maintenance treatment.

Drug use self-reports were compared with urinalysis for 248 clients in four methadone treatment programs. The validity of self-reporting based on urinalysis as a criterion depended on the type of drug examined. Opiate reporting was least valid, while benzodiazepine and cocaine reporting were moderately and highly valid, respectively. EMIT urinalysis was far more useful as a criterion of validity than TLC urinalysis. Self-reports helped identify drug users who were missed by urinalysis because of the latter's limited detection period, but urinalysis in turn detected an equal number of drug users missed by the interviews. The age of clients and the type of interviewer directly affected the rate of underreporting. Some respondents systematically denied disvalued behaviors (i.e., drug use and criminality), leading to a spurious correlation between these behaviors. This has important implications for future research.

The Validity of Methadone Clients' Self-Reported Drug Use

Aims. To determine the effects of pre- and in-treatment variables on patient retention in methadone treatment. Design. Retrospective longitudinal study of an admission cohort sample for up to 3 years of treatment or until discharge. Setting. Six methadone maintenance programs operating 15 clinics in New York City. Participants. A sample of 1206 admissions to these clinics during 1989-90. Measurements. Data were abstracted from patients' medical charts. Time in treatment for up to 3 years was the dependent variable, analyzed as a survival function. Pretreatment variables were: gender, race/ethnicity, age at admission, employment, education, marital status, living arrangements, child care responsibility, criminal justice status, life-time arrests, referral source, age at first heroin use, polydrug use, route of drug administration, mental health status and methadone treatment history. In-treatment variables were: patient problems during treatment, clinic response to patient problems, patient treatment strengths, methadone dosage, heroin use and cocaine use. Findings. The estimated median treatment duration was 23 months. Cox proportional hazards modeling determined that two pretreatment variables (older age and no criminal justice involvement) were associated with longer retention in treatment. Among in-treatment variables, constructive clinic responses to patient problems, higher methadone dosage, more patient treatment strengths and less heroin and cocaine use during treatment were associated with longer retention. Conclusions. Events during treatment are crucial for patient retention in methadone treatment. Only two of 16 pretreatment variables, compared with five of six during-treatment variables, had significant effects on length of stay in a multivariate model.

Stephen Magura

Papers

Validity of self-reported drug use in high risk populations: a meta-analytical review.

Prescription opioid abuse among enrollees into methadone maintenance treatment.

The Validity of Methadone Clients' Self-Reported Drug Use

Pre- and in-treatment predictors of retention in methadone treatment using survival analysis

Buprenorphine and methadone maintenance in jail and post-release: a randomized clinical trial