If you just got out of prison, chances are you’re going back — and soon — according to a recent study by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The study — which analyzed recidivism rates of prisoners released in 30 states between 2005 and 2010 — found that about two-thirds of people released from state prisons are arrested for a new crime within three years. Seventy-five percent of those released from prison are arrested again within five years of their release.
More than a third of the prisoners arrested within five years of their release were picked up within the first six months after their release, according to the study.
Those imprisoned for committing property offenses were most likely to reoffend, according to the study, with 82.1 percent arrested again within five years of their release. For violent offenders, that number dropped to 71.3 percent. Older prisoners are also less likely to reoffend, the study found, as 69.2 percent of prisoners who were 40 or older were arrested again within five years of their release as opposed to 84.1 percent of inmates who were 24 or younger at the time of their release.
This article appears in There’s No Place Like Humboldt.
Those stats are a meaningless pile of numbers if there is no discussion about what causes the high rate of recidivism. The fact that with a record getting a job is near impossible is a huge factor. With a record you can’t vote, you become a non-citizen. How is that productive for anyone but the newly privately owned big business prisons?At Pelican Bay they release men who have been in the SHU with no adjustment aid, no nothing. After years in solitary they are tossed out into a world that they don’t know anymore and are expected to adjust just like that.
You are more likely to read about abandoned puppies on the front page rather than our local system of dumping complex issues of drug abuse, distressed children, mental illness, and homelessness onto police officers that are neither trained for, nor desire, or deserve to take the extraordinary time to funnel all of them into jail, emergency rooms or mental health wards…with the attendant humility, occasional beating and fatality.
A civilized community would prioritize a compassionate response by a trained pair of professionals, probably paying for itself in its first year in reduced police responses, incarcerations and lawsuits.