Book Revievts

established, non-prison based therapeutic community - ~ e n d e r s o n Hospital - attention then shifts to Grendon, and an appraisal of the modifications needed to render the four tenets of therapeutic community treatment (democratisation, communalism, reality confrontation and permissiveness) viable in a prison setting. Subsequent chapters address the assessment of suitable candidates for admission, the dynamics existing both within units and in relation to their host prisons, the extension of a treatment programme to community settings post-release, and the evaluation of outcome research. There is no shortage of empirical data within each chapter, which is presented with reference to each unit under discussion. On the minus side, the format of successive chapters does become somewhat stereotyped, and this reader's sense of increasing dkja v ~ i was not assisted by some increasingly repetitive opening preambles. By and large however, these are minor criticisms and the core chapters remain useful and informative. The one disappointment in this respect is the chapter concerning the rise and fall of the Barlinnie Special Unit. Too little space is dedicated to the reasons for its demise, which within the context of the book as a whole, would have been more instructive.

The final section yields advice on the establishment of future therapeutic communities and discusses critical issues concerning the selection and professional development of staff. This is likely to be of particular interest to those involved in the delivery of services. Overall, this is a sensible and accessible introduction to an important and potentially expanding area of prison policy which will be easily readable by non-psychologically trained practitioners.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Survival Analysis with Long-Term Survivors Ross Maller and Xian Zhou (John Wiley & Sons, Chichester; 1996, 304pp, index, ISBN 0471962015; £45.00)

This is a book written by mathematicians for mathematicians (or at least those with strong mathematical inclinations). The focus of the book is on the handling of survival data where immunes are present (immunes being units who are not susceptible to the event under study). Examples of immunes cited are those who are cured of a particular disease or those released from prison who would never reoffend no matter how long they were followed up.

The authors approach to handling survival data is first to test for the presence of immunes and then to test whether follow-up was sufficiently long enough to be confident in the result. Parametric and non-parametric methods are described and the effects of outliers and how to handle them is also covered.

The book is comprehensively referenced and well illustrated with examples from the fields of criminology and medicine. For those who are unhappy with 'black box' methodology detailed mathematical derivations are given for the statistical tests used.

This book would be of interest to mathematicians or statisticians with an interest in survival analysis but may be rather too technical for those of us who 'dabble'.

Wendy Phillips

David Hargreaves

Science & Justice 1997; 37(4): 293-296