Decarcerating Correctional Facilities during COVID-19 Advancing Health, Equity, and Safety (2020) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix A: Recidivism, Incarceration, and Crime
Appendix A: Recidivism, Incarceration, and Crime
Pages 129-140
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From page 129... ...
. Yet there is considerable debate regarding what is being measured using these official markers of criminal justice involvement.
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From page 130... ...
report the results of an analysis of recidivism among individuals released from 15 state prisons in 1994. The study linked a random sample of releases from these states to criminal history records from the releasing states' criminal history repositories, as well as data from the cross-state repository maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the III database)
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From page 131... ...
While subsequent reports from the BJS cannot be used to construct a comparable figure post-2011, recidivism estimates published by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation show a sharp decline in return-to-custody rates with the 2011 reforms. Figure A-2 reports several 3-year recidivism measures for individuals released from California state prisons during fiscal years 2002 through 2014.
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From page 132... ...
shows a sharp decline in returns to custody even after adjusting for individual characteristics.1 Given the disproportionate contribution of California to the above widely cited release cohort studies, the sharp decline in California's returnto-custody rates, and the large drop in admissions in the state resulting from this reform, a comparable analysis of a post-2011 release cohort would likely reveal that the majority of released prison inmates do not return within 3 years. Beyond the outsized influence of California, several researchers have raised concerns about the focus on release cohorts rather than on cohorts defined by people who have ever served time in prison.
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From page 133... ...
The authors estimate recidivism in terms of both rearrest and return to custody for each annual release cohort during this period for observations of varying length. They present two sets of estimates: those in which each release receives equal weight in tabulating recidivism outcomes (what they refer to as the event-based sample)
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From page 134... ...
Finally, serving a prison sentence may alter the future offending trajectories of former prison inmates. A prison spell may 2 In relation to the two national release cohort studies, both had a complex sampling struc ture whereby they selected stratified random samples of releases from the included states, based on controlling by offense groupings.
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From page 135... ...
Interestingly, the study also found smaller effects of prison releases on crime rates in Italian provinces with relatively high incarceration rates, despite the generally low Italian incarceration rate (suggesting diminishing marginal crime fighting effects even in a low incarceration rate setting)
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From page 136... ...
First, decades of litigation pertaining to conditions of confinement and the availability of health and mental health services in the state prison system culminated in a federal court order to reduce state prison overcrowding. Second, public opinion pertaining to sentencing severity and the use of incarceration in particular softened, resulting in several notable ballot measures aimed at undoing many of the stringent sentencing practices introduced in past decades.
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From page 137... ...
Regarding the change in public opinion, in recent years California voters passed several state ballot initiatives aimed at reducing the use of prison along both the intensive and extensive margins. In 2012, voters approved a ballot measure that narrowed the definition of felonies that would qualify for second- and third-strike sentence enhancements, limiting these felonies to serious and violent offenses (Proposition 36)
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From page 138... ...
From the early 2000s on, however, there are notable departures with large relative decreases in California's incarceration rates post 2010. Figure A-4 presents long-term trends for overall California violent and property crime rates.
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From page 139... ...
present a thorough analysis of the 2011 reforms and find no evidence of an impact of the large reduction in the prison population on violent crime rates, but evidence of a small effect on part I property crime (auto theft)
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