Recidivism Cycle : A Person 's Relapse Into Criminal Behavior

1611 Words4 Pages

Topic: Recidivism Cycle (a person’s relapse into criminal behavior)
Thesis: Across America our prison systems release hundreds of individuals every day without giving them the necessary skills to thrive on the outside; there are many programs that can be implemented to lower the recidivism rates nationally.
Annotated Bibliography
Reducing Recidivism: States Deliver Results New York: Council of State Government Justice Center, June 2014. Print.
In this publication by the National Reentry Resource Center (NRRC) and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), statistics on the reduction of recidivism for eight states; Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. Each states information from 2007-2012 shows the percentage decrease in returns to prison, as well as the number of releases and admissions over those years. A section is provided for each state that shows how much the recidivism has decreased and the strategies used by the state to do this. Presenting what worked for each individual state in order to help lower the recidivism rates across the nation. Some of the ideas covered include; comparing recidivism rates between states, Re-incarceration rates and public safety, practices that reduce recidivism, tracking and reporting of recidivism, as well as the Second Chance Act. It also goes in to depth on why these changes were implemented in the first place.
The Reducing Recidivism publication gives great insight into what can change our prison systems. The BJA and the NRRC are highly influential to the reentry of past offenders into society. As a project that was supported by the BJA to gather statistics about the decreasing recidivism rates, this publication is h...

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... percent of prisoners under the age of 18 were rearrested versus 43 percent of prisoners over the age of 45. It is also noticed that men are rearrested 68 percent of the time versus women who were rearrested 57 percent of the time. From the time an inmate is released until three years later the chances of them being reconvicted rises about 60 percent, given that there is no help on the outside. Petersilia argues that having a solid parole system and adequate skills programs available these rates can go down. If these inmates are given the necessary means to thrive on the outside the amount returning would go down and the overcrowding in prisons that is occurring nationally would be drastically different. Using interviews Petersilia conducted with inmates, guards, and former inmates she expresses how the prison systems are failing the prisoners and society.

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