THE EFFECTS OF PUNISHMENT ON RECIDIVISM

The Effects of Punishment on Recidivism

The Effects of Punishment on Recidivism

Introduction

Recidivism refers to the repetition of behaviors that society sanctions, particularly those related to criminal offenses and substance abuse. In criminology, recidivism refers specifically to the rate at which people who have been released from prison are rearrested, reconvicted, or returned to prison (with or without a new sentence) during a specified period of time following the prisoner's release. Those persons are also known as “repeat” or “chronic” offenders (Marsh, 2007).

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BIS), which conducted a groundbreaking study of recidivism in 15 states in 2002, of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 1994, 67.5 percent were rear-rested for a new felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years of release. Of those 272,111 persons, 46.9 percent were reconvicted of a new crime and 25.4 percent were re-sentenced to prison for a new crime. In addition, 26.4 percent were back in prison within 3 years because of violations of some technical condition of their parole, such as failure to attend an appointment with a parole officer or failing a drug test.

Discussion

Most studies of recidivism focus on individual-level characteristics and find that people with prior offenses, drug addictions, and low levels of education tend to offend again. The 2002 BIS study found that men were more likely than women to recidivate in each of the four measurement categories they selected: rearrested, reconvicted, resentenced to prison for a new crime, and returned to prison with or without a new prison sentence. Black people were more likely than whites to recidivate. Higher rates of recidivism occurred among prisoners who were younger when released from prison. These data may underestimate the rate of recidivism, as the measures were based on statistics gathered from only 15 states and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Official crime data, including the Uniform Crime Report, are known to underestimate the crime rate, as demonstrated by surveys of victims, such as the National Crime Victimization Survey, as well as by self-report surveys of criminal involvement (Vila, 2008).

Today, criminologists increasingly focus their research on desistance from crime or strategies for deterrence from crime rather than recidivism. The contemporary thinking is that by focusing on recidivism, or why people repeatedly engage in behaviors that return them to prison, we fail to consider the factors that lead people away from criminal careers. Desistance is conceptualized as the causal process by which people cease engagement in criminal activity. Most popular in current criminology are developmental theories that consider criminal careers across the life span. This research asks why and how people first engage in, and eventually terminates criminal activities. Crime deterrence strategies are popular with the law enforcement community and by proponents of the rational choice theories in criminology (Marsh, 2007).

In this view, people who engage in crime are rational actors who choose to break the law after weighing the costs of benefits of such ...