Prison Recidivism Research Articles

Recidivism, Labor Markets, and Prison Conditions: Evidence from Uruguay

What explains prison recidivism? Relying on previously unavailable data on prison inmates in Uruguay, we study how external factors, such as employment dynamics on labor-intensive low-skilled jobs, and internal, such as prison-related factors, affect recidivism. Whereas the literature on recidivism has mostly focused on developed countries, we bring its study to the developing world and find that greater employment opportunities in labor-intensive, low-skill sectors, such as construction and domestic services, reduce recidivism. Consistent with the logic of economic opportunities, we also find heterogeneous effects by type of crime (property vs non-property). Finally, we find that prison-specific factors are also relevant, pointing to the importance of understanding prisons as part of the illegal ecosystem and the crime repression system. This analysis is novel to Latin America, a region besieged by the growing influence of criminal organizations that usually extend their influence and power to prisons.

Prevalência de doenças crônicas não transmissíveis no sistema prisional: um desafio para a saúde pública

Abstract A descriptive, cross-sectional, and quantitative study was conducted in 2019 with 202 participants randomly selected from a male penitentiary, with the application of a questionnaire, clinical care, and laboratory tests to estimate the prevalence of risk factors and noncommunicable chronic diseases in people deprived of their liberty. Data analysis verified associations using Fisher’s Exact Test and Chi-square Test. The predominant sociodemographic profile of the participants consisted of less-educated single, black, over 30 males with high prison recidivism. Most were sedentary smokers with high alcohol and drug consumption before incarceration. We identified prevalence levels of hypertension (24.8%), dyslipidemia (54.5%), overweight (49.9%), metabolic syndrome (16.8%), and diabetes (2.5%). The difficulty in accessing health services associated with long sentences and the unhealthy environment favors the development and deterioration of chronic diseases and their risk factors, a challenge for the organization of prison health care. This setting reiterates the need to apply resources and efforts to implement comprehensive, longitudinal, and equitable care for people deprived of liberty.

Prevalence of chronic noncommunicable diseases in the prison system: a public health challenge.

A descriptive, cross-sectional, and quantitative study was conducted in 2019 with 202 participants randomly selected from a male penitentiary, with the application of a questionnaire, clinical care, and laboratory tests to estimate the prevalence of risk factors and noncommunicable chronic diseases in people deprived of their liberty. Data analysis verified associations using Fisher's Exact Test and Chi-square Test. The predominant sociodemographic profile of the participants consisted of less-educated single, black, over 30 males with high prison recidivism. Most were sedentary smokers with high alcohol and drug consumption before incarceration. We identified prevalence levels of hypertension (24.8%), dyslipidemia (54.5%), overweight (49.9%), metabolic syndrome (16.8%), and diabetes (2.5%). The difficulty in accessing health services associated with long sentences and the unhealthy environment favors the development and deterioration of chronic diseases and their risk factors, a challenge for the organization of prison health care. This setting reiterates the need to apply resources and efforts to implement comprehensive, longitudinal, and equitable care for people deprived of liberty.

Is There a Relationship Between Prison Conditions and Recidivism?

Is There a Relationship Between Prison Conditions and Recidivism?

Recidivism of Prisoners in Bangladesh: Trends and Causes

, A common belief is expressed that imposing sanction on the criminal offenders is the only procedure to restrain crimes in a society. Many a times the offenders are convicted after committing an offence and after a certain period of time they are released. A large number among them again commit crimes; are rearrested, and resentenced. The preeminent objective of study is to explore the patterns and trends of recidivism and also to identify the causes of recidivism among prisoners. The study finds that deficits in education, employment, and housing as well as the lack of treatment programs pose significant barriers to the successful reentry of inmates released from prison. Moreover, outdated laws and procedures and long term justice system process are the main factors of recidivism in Bangladesh. There have been used differential association theory, classical school thought of criminology to explain the patterns, trend and causes and inoculation theory as prevention or reduction of recidivism of prisoners. This study concludes with a discussion that offers suggestions for future research.

The Timing of Prison Sanctions and the Odds of Returning to Prison After Release

A sample of 48,930 inmates was examined to estimate the direct and moderating effect of the timing of prison sanctions on recidivism. Logistic regression models demonstrated that number of sanctions was positively associated with recidivism but timing of an inmate’s last sanction before release did not significantly influence recidivism. However, timing of an inmate’s last sanction moderated the association between number of sanctions and recidivism. This moderation effect suggested that as time between an inmate’s last sanction and release from prison increased, the effect of the total number of sanctions on recidivism decreased in magnitude. The results of this assessment suggest that the number and timing of sanctions matter in explaining the relationship between prison sanctions and recidivism.

Factors of Prison Recidivism in Women: A Socioeducational and Sustainable Development Analysis

This article analyses women sentenced to prison in Spain (in open, closed, or ordinary regimes) to examine the risk and protection factors fundamentally related to criminal-prison recidivism. The study is national in scope, with a stratified representative sample of 756 female inmates, 446 in a closed environment and 310 in an open one. The women were surveyed using mixed questionnaires, and the data were analyzed using various tests and quantitative models of analysis. The results show the relationship between recidivism and different sociological and criminological characteristics. They highlight national origin as a risk factor for both samples. Age, addiction profile, criminal antecedents as a minor, and age at which the woman first went to prison were also assessed. Protective factors included official education, with education during the sentence as the most important, as well as courses and/or intervention programs attended. All of these issues contribute not only basic knowledge on the topic—for women while in prison and on temporary release—but also the foundations for improving prison socioeducational interventions/treatments and sustainable human development, and for preventing recidivism based on the best, most effective programs that focus on these issues.

Virtual Reality: Prospective Catalyst for Restorative Justice

A 2018 U.S. Department of Justice report assessing data from 30 states found that 83% of individuals released from state prisons in 2005 were rearrested within nine years.* When a revolving door ushers five of six individuals back into custody and decimates communities, more effective approaches to criminal justice demand attention. In countries around the world, restorative justice has been emerging as a promising candidate. It generally involves an interactive process in which stakeholders identify and grapple with harms caused by the crime. But many environments lack the resources to invoke its benefits. While restorative justice takes various forms, the crux of each variant involves perspective taking — seeing the harm and its consequences through the eyes of those who experienced it. Cognitive science research suggests that the emerging technology of virtual reality provides an innovative and often especially compelling approach to perspective taking. Embodying an avatar offers the opportunity to experience the world as another and could make virtual perspective-taking encounters a valuable introduction for subsequent in-person encounters or offer a perspective-taking opportunity when in-person encounters are not practical or prudent. This analysis explores how virtual reality could become a catalyst for restorative justice. *Mariel Alper, Matthew R. Durose, & Joshua Markman, 2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014), U.S. Dept. Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 250975, (2018), https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/18upr9yfup0514.pdf (last visited Feb. 16, 2020).

Rewarding for Causal Impact: Integrating Policy Evaluation and Incentive Alignment in the Design of Cross-Sector Contracts

Despite the emergence of contracts between governments and private actors involved in public services, a critical issue is how to enforce payments based on outcomes such as student learning or prisoner recidivism. Imperfect measurement may fail to reflect changes in outcomes that were caused by superior managerial effort. A possible way to address this problem is to adopt policy evaluation techniques that use control groups to examine what would have happened without the intervention, as is done in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and other methods of counterfactual assessment. However, our database of outcome-based contracts launched or in development worldwide shows that the majority of contracts (70%) simply assess changes in outcomes measured in the treated population. In this paper we bridge the literatures of contractual incentives and policy evaluation to explain this puzzle. We develop a theoretical model to compare payment rules based on the assessment of the treated to payment rules based on a comparison between treated and control groups. Building on the idea of statistical power, we show that the later contracts may under certain conditions undermine effort. This occurs, for instance, when the number of treated subjects is small and there is limited investment per treated subject, which is associated with potential effect size. Preliminary evidence from our database of outcome-based contracts is consistent with our predictions. Our results suggest that under certain conditions RCTs and other evaluation techniques may not be optimal to reward for social outcomes, even though they are considered best practice to assess policy interventions.

Kontribusi Cultural Values Terhadap Kecenderungan Residivisme Pada Narapidana Di Lembaga Pemasyarakatan Kelas Iia Jember

Research on recidivism tendencies which is influenced by internal factors that have been carried out is related to psychological problems (2014), self-regulation (2016) and self-control (2017). Based on this research it appears that there is a missing link related to the source of initial encouragement that comes from within the individual as a process of interaction and internalization of the initial experiences of individuals with parents, ancestors and other significant people. Related to this, this study aims to determine the effect of Cultural Value on the Trend of Recidivism in Jember Class IIA Prisoners. This type of research is associative quantitative that is to determine the relationship between one variable with another variable and the effect of a variable on other variables. There are two psychological scales used in this study, the Cultural Values scale adapted from The Potrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ-RR) compiled by Schwartz and the Residivism Tendency scale adapted from the Psychopathy Check List-Revised (PCL-R) compiled by Hare . The results of this study are expected to be input/reference in developing community values-based community intervention programs. The results showed a calculated F value of 0.471 with a significance level of 0.493> 0.05, which means that there was no influence of Cultural Value on the Trend of Residivism. Descriptive test shows that as many as 107 prisoners (56%) have high cultural values and 84 inmates (44%) have low cultural values. This means that prisoners tend to use cultural values as a reference in behavior, but they do not necessarily have compliance with the values that exist in the community. The highest percentage is the value of Universalism, Achievement, and Security. While the lowest percentage is the value of Stimulation, Benevolence Care, and Self Direction.

Examining the relationships between impulsivity, aggression, and recidivism for prisoners with antisocial personality disorder

Abstract Impulsivity impacts multiple life domains and is related to criminal and problematic behaviors. In forensic contexts, impulsivity and aggression are often associated with psychiatric issues. Personality disorders are related to worse prognosis, increased relapse, and damage to relationships. The aim of this study was to clarify the impact of psychopathy, impulsivity, and aggression on recidivism, and to investigate the relationships between these dimensions in prisoners with and without Antisocial Personality Disorder. The forensic sample included inmates with (n = 50) or without Antisocial Personality Disorder (n = 50). We measured psychopathic traits with the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM), impulsivity with the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11), and aggression with the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale (IPAS). There were significant between-group differences regarding premeditated aggression and attentional impulsivity. For inmates with antisocial personality disorder, impulsive aggression was related to recidivism (number of times in jail). Their level of psychopathy was related to premeditated aggression and motor impulsivity. Impulsive aggression, like attentional impulsivity, was related to recidivism only for inmates with antisocial personality disorder. In conclusion, psychopathy is associated with recidivism; moreover, impulsivity and aggression are central to recidivism for these individuals.

Erratum to: Reinforcing the impacts of work release on prisoner recidivism: the importance of integrative interventions

We present findings from an evaluation of a large work release program in the Israeli Prison Service. The Israeli program uses an integrative therapeutic approach which combines work release with a series of other program elements. Our main question is whether this integration of multiple program elements leads to strong benefits in terms of reincarceration and re-arrests. The study uses a rich administrative database to develop a propensity score matching approach for creating matched treatment (n = 547) and control (n = 547) subjects. The prisoners in the groups are found to be similar on known characteristics after matching. MHbounds methods are used to assess the sensitivity of the results to bias. Average standardized effect sizes in our study vary between .17 and .31. In general, rehabilitation outcomes observed are much larger than those reported for US evaluations of work release programs. Work release in Israel is not simply work release, but involves a positive social environment, a high dosage of counseling and therapy, and more general privileges for inmates including furloughs and cultural activities. We argue that our findings suggest the importance of a broader more integrative approach to work release programs to achieve enhanced success in reducing recidivism.

A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of the Impact of Public Assistance on Prisoner Recidivism

The Welfare Act of 1996 banned welfare and food stamp eligibility for felony drug offenders and gave states the ability to modify their use of the law. Today, many states are revisiting their use of this ban, searching for ways to decrease the size of their prison populations; however, there are no empirical assessments of how this ban has affected prison populations and recidivism among drug offenders. Moreover, there are no causal investigations whatsoever to demonstrate whether welfare or food stamp benefits impact recidivism at all. This paper provides the first empirical examination of the causal relationship between recidivism and welfare and food stamp benefits Using a survival-based estimation, we estimated the impact of benefits on the recidivism of drug-offending populations using data from the National Corrections Reporting Program. We modeled this impact using a difference-in-difference estimator within a regression discontinuity framework. Results of this analysis are conclusive; we find no evidence that drug offending populations as a group were adversely or positively impacted by the ban overall. Results apply to both male and female populations and are robust to several sensitivity tests. Results also suggest the possibility that impacts significantly vary over time-at-risk, despite a zero net effect. Overall, we show that the initial passage of the drug felony ban had no measurable large-scale impacts on recidivism among male or female drug offenders. We conclude that the state initiatives to remove or modify the ban, regardless of whether they improve lives of individual offenders, will likely have no appreciable impact on prison systems.

Reinforcing the impacts of work release on prisoner recidivism: the importance of integrative interventions

Reinforcing the impacts of work release on prisoner recidivism: the importance of integrative interventions

One Good Decision: The Policy Argument for Extended Release Naltrexone in the Criminal Justice Setting

AbstractCriminal-justice (CJ) offenders with opioid-use disorders (OUDs) are at increased risk for recidivism and overdose (Durose et al. 2014, “Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 30 States in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010.”

An assessment of the English and maths skills levels of prisoners in England

Although the direct links between education and reducing recidivism in prisoners are problematic, there is little argument that education is a factor in promoting reintegration and rehabilitation. There is a current focus in prison education on education for employment, and yet there are no recent or unambiguous data about the skills levels of the prison population. The most often quoted figures are both 15 years out of date and deeply flawed in terms of their comparisons with the general population. This article sets out a new study that takes the mandatory initial assessments carried out on every new prisoner between August 2014 and July 2015 and compares them with the national Skills for Life survey conducted in 2011. This provides us with some hard facts about the English and maths skills of the past year's intake of prisoners. The conclusions argue that while the numeracy skills of prisoners are better than previously understood, the cohort has extremely poor literacy skills, and addressing these needs should be a priority for government.

Psychometric prediction of penitentiary recidivism.

Attempts to predict prison recidivism based on the personality have not been very successful. This study aims to provide data on recidivism prediction based on the scores on a personality questionnaire. For this purpose, a predictive model combining the actuarial procedure with a posteriori probability was developed, consisting of the probabilistic calculation of the effective verification of the event once it has already occurred. Cuestionario de Personalidad Situacional (CPS; Fernández, Seisdedos, & Mielgo, 1998) was applied to 978 male inmates classified as recidivists or non-recidivists. High predictive power was achieved, with the area under the curve (AUC) of 0.85 (p <.001; Se = 0.012; 95% CI [0.826, 0.873]. The answers to the CPS items made it possible to properly discriminate 77.3% of the participants. These data indicate the important role of the personality as a key factor in understanding delinquency and predicting recidivism.

Errores conceptuales en la estimación de riesgo de reincidencia

En un estudio recientemente publicado sobre Tasa de reincidencia Penitenciaria 2014 en Cataluña se ofrecen, entre otra información de gran interés, los resultados de aplicar el RisCanvi como herramienta de valoración del riesgo de violencia a un conjunto de internos, y la comparación entre el riesgo de reincidencia violenta predicho y la reincidencia violenta efectivamente observada. En dicho estudio se valora muy positivamente la capacidad predictiva del RisCanvi; sin embargo, en este trabajo sostengo que debe hacerse una interpretación diferente de los datos que conduce a conclusiones menos optimistas. Ello se debe a que es necesario diferenciar con claridad entre sensibilidad y valor predictivo, y entre estimaciones de riesgo relativas y absolutas, lo que aconseja utilizar tanto el RisCanvi como otros instrumentos de valoración del riesgo con mucha prudencia en determinados contextos, especialmente cuando de estas valoraciones dependan decisiones sobre la libertad u otros derechos fundamentales de los internos.

Once a Criminal Always a Criminal? A 15-Year Analysis of Recidivism Among Female Prisoners in Massachusetts

The study of prisoner recidivism has long captured the interest of criminal justice researchers. Recidivism studies attempt to answer a variety of questions ranging from what are the characteristics of those who reoffend, what factors predict offender recidivism, and how long does a recidivist remain in the community before finding themselves in conflict with the law again. Unlike many studies that examine recidivism over a relatively short term - three to five years, this study investigates recidivism over a 15-year period among a group of female offenders released from a Massachusetts prison in 1995. Findings point to three propositions moving forward. First, correctional programming geared specifically toward youthful offenders might be necessary to promote desistance over the life course. Second, offender monitoring and accountability up to 36 months after release from incarceration may reduce the risk of re-offending. Third, studies with a follow-up period of ten years would be a valuable addition to the recidivism literature to advance our understanding of chronic offending among women.

A Public Administration Headache: An Evaluation Analysis of Prison Policy and Recidivism Toward Social Reintegration

We focus on discovering, describing, and understanding prison recidivism; secondly, we intend to know if the prison policy contributes to deterrence of crime; thirdly, we want to know if prison labor and vocational education and training influence the rate of prison recidivism by increasing social reintegration or decreasing prison recidivism. We use a sample of n = 1643 prisoners, multivariate clustering methods, focusing on latent class models, to trace the profile of prisoners, and we use the chi-square test to test dependence/independence of some variable pairs. Data support the heterogeneity of inmates, resulting in two clusters, recidivists (50%), and nonrecidivists.