Suchergebnisse

California's 2011 Public Safety Realignment created an unprecedented policy experiment by transferring the authority over lower-level felony offenders from the state correctional system to fifty-eight county jail and probation systems. While centered in California, these changes are reflective of an ongoing national conversation about the appropriate level of government at which to focus crime control efforts. In this article, we first situate Realignment in criminological and sociolegal literatures, showing how the reform offers opportunities to further inquiry as to the effectiveness of a wide variety of correctional strategies, implementation, and local variation in correctional law and policy. We then review early research focused on the statewide effect of Realignment on recidivism, which has produced mixed findings depending on the measure of recidivism applied. We then examine variation in recidivism outcomes across county sites and present findings that indicate there is an important relationship between local Realignment implementation strategies and recidivism outcomes. Throughout, we focus on two overarching themes. The first is the challenge of disentangling the roles of offender behavior from justice system response in meaningfully interpreting changes in recidivism outcomes. The second is the challenge of evaluating the effects of policy or practice changes under limited data. Although the need for better and more expansive data is a common theme, we highlight it here in the context of a larger data collection that we have under way.

The current study focuses on adolescents with sex offense histories and examines sexual reoffending patterns within 2 years of a prior sex offense. We employed inductive statistical models using archival official records maintained by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ), which provides social, offense, placement, and risk assessment history data for all youth referred for delinquent behavior. The predictive accuracy of the random forest models is tested using receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves, the area under the curve (AUC), and precision/recall plots. The strongest predictor of sexual recidivism was the number of prior felony and misdemeanor sex offenses. The AUC values range between 0.71 and 0.65, suggesting modest predictive accuracy of the models presented. These results parallel the existing literature on sexual recidivism and highlight the challenges associated with predicting sex offense recidivism. Furthermore, results inform risk assessment literature by testing various factors recorded by an official institution.

Recent research on recidivism emphasizes the importance of neighborhoods to successful prisoner reentry. This research analyzes two ways in which institutions of neighborhood governance affect reentry. First, offenders in neighborhoods with institutions supporting social control may have more success in reintegrating into the community. Second, neighborhood institutions may create barriers to entry for ex-offenders more likely to reoffend. To test this, we combine Arkansas Department of Corrections data on offenders returning to Little Rock between 2004 and 2014 with geocoded data on neighborhood and homeowner associations. We analyze this data using Cox proportional hazards and two-stage residual inclusion models of recidivism hazard. We find that a significant relationship exists between recidivism hazard and neighborhood governance, but that this is attributable to nonrandom assignment of ex-offenders to neighborhoods rather than the role neighborhood organizations play in facilitating reentry.

We use a unique data set on post-release behavior of former Italian inmates to estimate the effect of prison conditions on recidivism. By combining different sources of data we exploit variation in prison conditions measured by: 1) the extent of overcrowding at the prison level, 2) the number of deaths in the facility of detention during an inmate's stay and 3) the distance of the prison from the chief town of the province where the prison is located. By considering inmates who served their sentence in a jurisdiction different from the hometown in which they live after release, we can include province of residence fixed effects and account for the main source of unobserved heterogeneity correlated to prison conditions. We find that a harsher prison treatment does not reduce former inmates' criminal activity. The extent of overcrowding and the number of deaths do not decrease the probability to be re-arrested. Instead, we find evidence that the degree of isolation measured by distance from the prison of detention to the chief town of the province where the prison is located increases recidivism. -- Crime ; prison ; deterrence

Since the early 1980s, supermax incarceration has emerged as a common feature of the American corrections landscape. This special type of high‐cost housing, which involves extended isolation with little programming or contact with others, remains largely unevaluated and is of interest for three reasons. First, the study of supermax housing offers a unique opportunity to understand the factors related to the successful reentry of offenders back into society. Second, it affords an opportunity to test the claims, many of which are grounded in mainstream criminological theory, that have been made about the putative effects of supermax confinement. Third, it provides an empirical touchstone that can help inform policy debates about the merits of such confinement. Examining data from the Florida Department of Corrections, we test competing hypotheses about the effects of supermax housing on 3‐year recidivism outcomes. We find evidence that supermax incarceration may increase violent recidivism but find no evidence of an effect of the duration of supermax incarceration or the recency of such incarceration to the time of release into society. We discuss the findings and their implications for theory, research, and policy.

We use a unique data set on post-release behavior of former Italian inmates to estimate the effect of prison conditions on recidivism. By combining different sources of data we exploit variation in prison conditions measured by: 1) the extent of overcrowding at the prison level, 2) the number of deaths in the facility of detention during an inmate's stay and 3) the distance of the prison from the chief town of the province where the prison is located. By considering inmates who served their sentence in a jurisdiction different from the hometown in which they live after release, we can include province of residence fixed effects and account for the main source of unobserved heterogeneity correlated to prison conditions. We find that a harsher prison treatment does not reduce former inmates' criminal activity. The extent of overcrowding and the number of deaths do not decrease the probability to be re-arrested. Instead, we find evidence that the degree of isolation measured by distance from the prison of detention to the chief town of the province where the prison is located increases recidivism.

With the rise in the use of prisons, recidivism also grew. Recidivism, in the broadest sense, is the act of a past offender coming back into contact with the justice system. Prisons have been used as far back as the fourth century, but over time their purpose has changed. Today in the United States, the main purpose of prisons is rehabilitation. The most recent law, the First Steps Act, reflects the desire to reduce the trend of recidivism. Many programs have been used as a method of reducing recidivism. Recidivism is a cycle of pain, creating jaded prisoners and placing them back in a society filled with people who doubt and fear them. They have to work around laws that hinder an easy return to the community. Recidivism leaves houses empty of fathers and mothers, which destroys families and increases the likelihood of juvenile offenders. It causes more people to face the pain and suffering of others' actions. Recidivism is not declining because no one is cooperating. The lack of cooperation is shown by varying definitions, incomparable studies, and only partial participation. There is also a lack of effective action by the United States government. The problem of recidivism in the United States will only improve when people care not only about themselves but also others. It is better for citizens if recidivism is reduced. A reduction in recidivism would be safer and provide a better use of the citizens' taxes. It is also necessary for citizens to have compassion and empathy for past offenders. If the citizens had compassion, then reducing recidivism would become a real possibility.