This literature review suggests several new directions in providing the critical linkage across typologies that classify offenders for risk, treatment, and control. There is no “one-stop shopping” offender typology available that can identify the risk level, targeted treatment protocols, and control levels of the offender groups examined: murderers, sex offenders, batterers, violent prisoners, and violent mentally ill offenders. Further research is desperately needed to establish the links between offender risk level, offender treatment needs, and offender control requirements for each of these offender groups. This article provides a “state of the art” discussion of key issues that must be addressed in the design, development, and implementation of typologies for each of these targeted groups of offenders. An assessment is conducted of the lessons learned from the great prison classification experiment. This is followed by an assessment of new directions in the development of typologies of offenders and the communities in which offenders reside, based on the simple notion that offender change--not offender control--needs to be the primary focus of the next generation of correctional classification systems. References