How Recidivism Is Better Than Others, And The Researcher

Prison is a place where the criminal justice system put its entire hopes. The correctional

This paper will discuss facts regarding the prosecution process, the concepts of incapacitation and deterrence as methods of reducing crime rates, the network of people that the prison system exposes criminals to, and the assimilation of criminals back into society as seen through recidivism rates, for the purpose of analyzing the ethical scope of the effectiveness of the process of remediation as a whole.

The data from the study demonstrated that therapeutic community theory substance abuse treatment in a correctional facility was, “Effective in reducing the recidivism and that the time spent in treatment was positively related to greater periods between re-arrest and to a greater probability of positive outcomes. (Wexler, and Williams, 1986, Wexler, Falkin, and Lipton, 1990)

his paper examines multiple factors that help determine reasons for why there is such a great amount of people relapsing back into criminal behavior once released, which only leads them into a federal or state prison. Recidivism can be perceived into different category’s based upon the why factor. Criminal acts that result in rearrests, and reconviction or return to prison with or without new a new sentence during a three-year period following the prisoner’s release is considered recidivism. There are many different reasons why a person goes back into prison once being released, whether by choice or force or even just nature of habit. Many studies have been conducted to find a pattern or reason on why recidivism is so common. Available

The United States of America is phrased by many, as being “the land of the free.” Yet, the Unites States currently has the highest per capita prison population than any other country. The United States makes up only 5% of the world’s population and of that 5%, 25% of our overall nation’s population is currently incarcerated. A few factors that attribute to our high rates of incarceration include, sentencing laws: such as mandatory- minimum sentencing, lack of initial deterrence from crime, the war on drugs and the presence of recidivism. With our ever growing incarceration rates and the cost of housing individual offenders averaging $22,000 a criminal justice agenda. Recidivism refers to a person 's relapse into criminal behavior resulting in rearrests, reconviction or return to prison with or without a new sentence during a three-year period following the prisoner 's release (National Institute of Justice.) Many programs have been implemented in our prison system to help reduce the recidivism rates. Programs such as educational/ vocational programming, reentry programs, substance abuse programs and subsidized employment are among many programs in which have been proven effective. Yet, due to costs deficits, the clock is ticking to find evidence based programs to invest in. So, the question currently being sought after is, which method is most effective in reducing recidivism rates?

While evaluating the drug court programs several types of dependencies were discovered. One dependency was created because of multiple measures of criminal behavior during the same time of the follow-ups. Each evaluation had to utilize a particular research sample so that statistical independence could be maintained. An odds-ratio effect size was used because this type of format is most appropriate effect size for the outcomes referring to recidivism. The coding of the effect size was done in such a way that positive effect sizes indicated the treatment group had more of a favorable outcome than the comparison group. The researchers coded an effect size that quantified each court's effects on recidivism. There was also the coding of drug court programs, research methodology, and samples (Mitchell et al., 2012). The results of the study showed that participants in the drug court programs have lower recidivism rate than nonparticipants. These rates show to be less following their removal from the drug court programs. These findings express the need for continuous funding, development, and operation of drug court programs as they prove a reduction in recidivism. However, when it comes to drug courts in the juvenile judicial system, the finding are considerably less than adult drug

There is a great debate throughout our country, and in individual states, over how long criminals should be incarcerated for various crimes. The relationship between the length of prison terms and recidivism is one of the central points of the debate in sentencing and corrections policy. Many people assert that longer prison terms are more effective at deterring future crimes because they set higher price for criminal behavior and because they hold offenders until they are more likely to “age out” of a criminal life style. However, others argue just the opposite and that is more time behind bars increases the chances that inmates will reoffend later because it breaks their supportive bonds in the community and hardens their associations with other criminals. According to Oliver (2011), both of these arguments are accurate because the strongest research finds that these two theories cancel each other out. Several studies, looking at different populations and using varied methodologies, have attempted to find a relationship between the length of prison terms and recidivism but have failed to find a consistent impact, either positive or negative. There is one thing for sure and that is incarceration and recidivism is a very active cycle which affects the lives of many

Correctional treatment programs have long been thought not to be effective in lowering the recidivism among criminals; Martinson (1979). Researchers have done countless studies and surveys only to find out that many of these studies and programs work and nearly the same number of programs do not work, depending on what component was or was not a part of the studies. Knowing that all programs does not work for all criminals is a no brainer, however, finding a good mixture of what does work and for what percentage of criminals is a beginning to duplicate that program with a few minor adjustments in the programs.

The revolving door on American prisons is as bad for the communities across the nation as it is for the people being cycled through the system. In “Offender Reentry”, David Allender, delves into how recidivism affects both the criminals and the community. Americans are starting to realize that the current prison system is not designed to reform, only to punish criminals. Because of this many ex-convicts are released from sentencing and allowed back into the real world without the necessary social skills to properly reintegrate. The problem became obvous with sex offenders, followed by minor drug crime. Allender points out that “The limited funding for treatment programs, which occurs because no one can prove that criminal activity did not happen

Abstract: This research proposals seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of Maryland’s Correctional Education program, by examining Maryland’s Criminal Justice Reinvestment program. The goal of the reinvestment program is to reinvest freed funds from closing select prisons back into the criminal justice system and use them to improve correctional education and rehabilitation programs. The end goal is to have an ex-offender that is able to provide for themselves without returning back to crime. Studies have shown that those who complete a correctional educational or rehabilitative program are less likely to recidivise than inmates that do not. The focus of the study will be to examine the implementation of the program, and to track inmates during the first three to five years after their release. From previous research we have learned the most likely causes of recidivism, yet with this study we will be able to examine the potential of decreasing recidivism to acceptable rates below 10%.

The United States justice system can be described as a cycle, where people enter the prison system, are released, and upon failure to integrate into society soon find themselves back behind bars. Although the means in which the cycle is perpetuated can be argued, the rate of re-offenders is constantly trying to be reduced. One term used to define this type of convict is recidivism, which is the repeat criminal action of a convicted inmate. Recidivism is fastly becoming a issue in the United States as it has been shown that 70% of convicted offenders have been reconvicted within three years of release (Esperian, 2010, p. 322). As crime of any background can be detrimental to society, this high rate of reentry into the justice system has stimulated

The few instances of progress in offender improvement are little and spurious when there are correlations. Martinson’s general finding is that rehabilitation has little to no impact on offender improvement. Education and vocational training as a rehabilitative effort had an intended offender improvement response. The data provided from the reports display no clear results that education and vocational training have a positive impact. Next, addresses offender improvement with therapy through individual, group, and milieu therapy. Individual therapy methods provided only one study with a direct measure of its effects; it had no improvement on recidivism rates. Group therapy was the most successful out of the three, but the amount of evidence provided was spurious. In milieu therapy, it was found to be neither negative nor positive only cost-effective when concerning the institution’s environment. Expanding on the institutional environment is medical treatment. The use of tranquilizers depicts a short-term improvement in boys and negative results in girls. Sentence length when dealing with offender improvement provided conflicting data when comparing juvenile and adult populations. Decarceration of convicts while outside an institution also shows no offender improvement and in some cases even adverse results. Intensive supervision inside and outside of the intuitions seemed to work, but the studies contain unclear variables and produced unclear effects on the offender’s behavior. Overall rehabilitation efforts thus far are vague and

Over many years there has been great debate about whether rehabilitation reduces the rate of recidivism in criminal offenders. There has been great controversy over whether anything works to reduce recidivism and great hope that rehabilitation would offer a reduction in those rates. In this paper I will introduce information and views on the reality of whether rehabilitation does indeed reduce recidivism. Proposed is a quasi-experiment, using a group of offenders that received rehabilitation services and an ex post facto group that did not? I intend to prove that rehabilitation services do

With the highest incarcerated rate in the world, does the United States prison systems offer quality rehabilitation or just punishment? According to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there was approximately 706 prisoners per 100,000 residents, or about 2.2 million prisoners in 2012 and within 3 years, almost 6 out of 10 released inmates will be rearrested and half will be back in prison. According to data from www.gpo.gov , the vast majority of prisoners are not rehabilitated. Two-thirds of released prisoners are re-arrested and one-half are re-incarcerated within three years of release from prison. Rates of recidivism rise to approximately 75%-85% of released prisoners are likely to be re-arrested within a decade of release. Successful rehabilitation is vital when releasing an inmate into the community as it produces a significant reduction in criminal recidivism. The purpose of incarceration is to protect the public and punish as well as rehabilitate the criminal. It is designed to change an inmate's view of life and alter their future behavior when re-entering society. Prisons offer education, labor, and other rehabilitation sources to inmates, so why is the recidivism rate so high with these programs in place?

Research on recidivism reveals a variety of different ways to define and measure its effectiveness on the outcome. One instrument widely used in assessing offenders is the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R). The LSI-R was developed with short-term offenders and community supervisees. It assesses largely risk factor for recidivism and is designed to inform parole management decisions (Manchak et al., 2008). The 54 items of the LSI-R assess ten “risk-needs” factors: criminal history, education/employment, financial, family/marital, accommodation, leisure/recreation, peers/companions, alcohol/drug problems, emotional/personal, and attitude/orientation (p. 478). Results indicate that the LSI-R moderately predicts general, but not necessarily violent recidivism (p. 477). The utility of the LSI-R in predicting community recidivism is well established for probationers and minor offenders.