Springer Publishing

Preface
I
n this completely new text—in collaboration with a distinguished team of
45 justice, forensic, and mental health experts—we have set out to provide
an authoritative resource on the delivery of evidence-based forensic mental
health services with victims, offenders, and their families.
Consider some sobering statistics. Early in the 21 st century, the U.S. Department
of Justice and the FBI reported that 26 million rapes, burglaries, robberies, and
thefts took place annually. A woman is battered every 9 seconds somewhere in the United
States, and 40 to 70% of juvenile and adult offenders have a mental health disorder.
Indeed, forensic social workers have a formidable and critical role in providing risk
assessments, expert testimony, mental health care, substance abuse treatment and other
timely best practices to both victims and offenders. Accordingly, the common thread
that binds together the 25 chapters in this book is a collective response to the overarching
question: What is being done to advocate for, and deliver, critically needed
mental health interventions and social services to perpetrators and survivors of
serious and violent crimes? Consider just a few of the topics and issues covered in this
handbook: forensic risk assessment, expert testimony, developing mitigation evidence,
batterer group treatment, juvenile justice policies, juvenile offender assessment and treatment,
substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, multisystemic treatment of
juveniles, motivational interviewing, criminal and drug court practices, adult correctional
services and programs, PTSD and substance abuse treatment, services for HIV
infected and incarcerated female offenders, community-based aftercare and recidivism
prevention programs, restorative justice, and victim-offender mediation.
It is our sincere hope that this handbook will be a useful and timely resource among
administrators, professionals, educators, and students in social work, psychology, and
criminal justice. Editing a book of such volume is a formidable task. Yet, if it helps
improve the life of just one offender or victim, it will have been worth the effort.
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