Contents |
Crime and Punishment
Issue | Research | Q&A | Positions | Official Platform Plank | All Topics | Help
What is the number of repeat infractions needed to declare someone a recidivist
Recidivism is the tendency to lapse into a previous pattern of behavior, especially a pattern of criminal habits [1]. It is also associated with a relapse in disease. For criminal justice, recidivism is the measure of convicted criminals again repeating criminal offenses.
Assumptions
The measure likely assumes a few things:
- In order to start the "three strikes" clock, a recidivist has to be incarcerated at least once. Acquittals or other out-of-court settlements that avoid sentencing are not included.
- In order to be known as a recidivist, a known criminal has to commit another crime different than the first. This means that recidivism is inherently an incomplete statistic reflecting only what police know about crimes and criminals, and it has to neglect a recidivist's role in unsolved crimes.
- Factors about the circumstances of either the first or future crimes are not considered. Once caught = criminal. Twice caught = recidivist.
Evidence
Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994
A 2002 report by the U.S. Department of Justice examined the recidivism rates of released prisoners, looking specifically at the four most serious offenses (violent, property, drug and public-order). What it shows is that, overall, about 2/3 of all released prisoners are rearrested. That rate is higher for property offenses (73.8%) and a little lower for violent and public-order offenses (61.7% and 62.2%, respectively). Reconviction, however, is fewer than half, ranging from 39.9% of violent offenders to 53.4% of criminals commiting property offenses. Most, but not all, of those reconvictions result in another prison sentence. These numbers cover prisoners released in 1994 from 15 different states, tracking their criminal activity over the next three years.
Economics seems to be a running theme in the offenses being tracked. Among violent offenses, robbery is the highest percentage overall (9.9%) being released. In addition to being a crime of violence, it is also one that may be motivated by economics. Almost half of those released from prison after serving time for property offenses committed burglary, and all of the offenses are potentially economically motivated. Among drug offenders released from prison, there were three times as many traffickers as those jailed for possession
These numbers fail to account for:
- What kinds of crimes are committed the second time. For instance, are the crimes violent offenders committing after release property offenses?
- The extent to which parole officers and monitoring programs affect criminal behavior is unknown.
- Age is not considered. Are recidivists likely to be younger convicts?
- Financial circumstance. Particularly with regard to property offenses, is criminal correction not weighing as heavily as economic circumstance in the decision to commit another crime?
- Duration and location of prior sentence is not reflected in these raw rates.
- The makeup of the non-recidivists. What are the demographics or circumstances that create "corrected" criminals?
- Missing data -- a number of the states in this report failed to provide data that could be reconciled with that of other states.
The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment
Beginning in the 1980s, politicians visibly worked to "get tough on crime" by resurrecting the death penalty, instituting the "three strikes" laws, setting mandatory minimums for certain offenses, and increasing prosecution of juveniles in adult courts. The result, however, was not significantly less crime but rather significantly larger prison population. The U.S. prison population increased almost three-fold between 1985 and 2002. The incarceration rate more than doubled in the same period (from 313 to 701 per 100,000). Throughout the 1990s, the crime rate steadily declined.
Beckett and Sasson traced the rhetoric of get-tough politics back to the late 1960s and a Republican response to social programs. The War on Poverty mutated into the War on Crime. The motivation for the crime legislation, then, is political gain, spurred on by growing media sensationalism and public fear.
Recidivism vs. Employment of Ex-Offenders in the U.S.
According to the Urban Institute, a non-partisan economic and social policy research organization, 56% of all prisoners released in 1999 had prior convictions and one-fourth had three or more convictions[2]. Rather, this was true for prisoners aged 20-40; the rate of re-arrest falls dramatically for men after criminals reach their mid-forties. This has great impact on the job market, since in 2001 some three million men had jail time in their personal histories and millions more had been released from probationary restrictions. Richard Freeman attributes much of the issue to medical problems (mental illness, physical ailments, and addictions) that afflict many prisoners and make socially-acceptable moral judgments difficult. Medical factors help explain the high rate of recidivism and the relative ineffectiveness of rehabilitation programs.
References
The following are sources that might help answer this question:
- Beckett, K., and Sasson, T. (2004). The Politics of injustice: Crime and punishment in America, 2nd edition. Sage Publications.
- Freeman, R.B. (2003).Can We Close the Revolving Door? Recidivism vs. Employment of Ex-Offenders in the U.S. Urban Institute. Retrieved on July 23, 2006 from http://www.urban.org/publications/410857.html
- U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994, Special Report NCJ 193427 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, June 2002), p. 8. (PDF)
Related Questions
The following questions may be of interest to this topic: