'Prisonized' Neighborhoods Make Recidivism More Likely

sciencehabit writes: One of the most important questions relating to incarceration and rehabilitation is how to discourage recidivism. After a prison stint, about half of convicts wind up back in the slammer within three years. But sociologist David Kirk noticed a pattern: convicts who moved away from their old neighborhood when released from prison had a much smaller recidivism rate. Kirk found that the concentration of former prisoners in a neighborhood had a dramatic effect on the likelihood of committing another offense (abstract). "So if an ex-con’s average chance of returning to prison after just 1 year was 22%—as it was in 2006—an additional new parolee in the neighborhood boosted that chance to nearly 25%. The numbers climb for each new parolee added. In some of the most affected neighborhoods—where five of every thousand residents were recent parolees—nearly 35% were back behind bars within a year of getting out." The rates stayed consistent even when controlling for chronic poverty and other neighborhood characteristics.

Comments

Do pigs make sties, or do sties make pigs?

[demonlapin]

The experience of Memphis, Tennessee, as reported in The Atlantic, with breaking up high-crime neighborhoods and redistributing their inhabitants to other places: the bad guys quickly find their feet and begin preying on a broader class of victims, while the decent-but-poor find their social networks shattered.

Are you saying that criminals don't exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

The prison system is only half of the issue. Let's not kid ourselves, those in prison aren't there just for the hell of it. Many of them have in fact committed very serious crimes, and should in fact be locked up for the good of society. When a thug in a gang does a drive-by shooting and kills several people, some of them innocent bystanders, he should be in jail. When a thug peddles harmful drugs to kids, he should be in jail. When a thug steals from a shop and roughs up the cashier, he should be in jail, assuming he doesn't try to violently attack a police officer while leaving the crime scene and the officer shoots him in self-defence. When a thug breaks into a computer network closet and plants a device to steal and redistribute data he's not authorized to access and redistribute, he should be in jail. We can't blame the prison system for the harmful actions that people have voluntarily engaged in.

Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist?

[ShanghaiBill]

Let's not kid ourselves, those in prison aren't there just for the hell of it.

You're kidding yourself. No other country imprisons as many people, either absolutely or per capita, and most other countries have far less violence than we do. And don't think we have less crime because of the prisons. America's prison rate soared after crime rates began to fall. Also, not every state has engaged in the prison building frenzy, and they have seen crime fall even faster. Prisons are incredibly expensive, diverting resources that could be beneficial. They breed more crime than the deter, and not just through recidivism, but also by destroying families and even neighborhoods. Boys growing up in fatherless homes, especially if that father is in the clink, are very likely to grow up into the next generation of criminals. Neighborhoods with a lot of "missing men" tend to be festering cesspools of poverty, substance abuse, illegitimate births, and criminality.

Nonviolent offenders should receive alternative punishments, so they can continue to be productive people, with family and social connections. Prison should be reserved for violent offenders that are a physical danger to other people.

On the bright side, this problem is finally getting some positive attention. Both Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul have spoken out against the "culture of incarceration", so hopefully it will get some attention in the 2016 campaign.

Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist?

[Greyfox]

Maybe not now, but if you actually work on fixing broken people, you'd end up with a prison profile more like Norway's. That wouldn't happen overnight, naturally. The system we have now has resulted in an awful lot of broken people, and they just propagate their disorders to their children. Look at violent criminals now and in most cases I think you'll find someone who would not have been violent if they'd received help at an earlier stage of their lives. People don't become criminals for no reason. Someone doesn't just wake up one day and think "What a nice day, I think I'll go out and murder a bunch of people!" We always know about those people in advance.

Of course, my Socialist-Totaltarian regime has a multi-pronged approach to addressing this:

1. All children will be confiscated from their parents and birth and raised in sanitary state-run facilities. Processes will be put in place to insure that no violent or sexual abuse of the children will be possible.

2. All children will be reversibly sterilized at puberty. Anyone wishing to breed will be required to pass a parental competency test.

3. For anyone unable to pass a parental competency test, the state will choose a partner based on specially-designed algorithms designed to insure the happiness of the couple.

4. All religion will be illegal except for the state-run one, which will involve Smurfs. Non-Smurfy behavior will be dealt with harshly.

I predict that my society would reach the "Utopia" stage within three generations.

:-P

Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist?

[SvnLyrBrto]

It's not that theft is an uncommon crime though. It's just that the police don't want to be bothered investigating thefts, arresting thieves, or recovering your property. A stolen car will get a bit of attention. But for just about anything else, the best you can realistically count on is them letting you go into a station and fill out a report that a desk officer will sign and photocopy so you can file a claim with your homeowner's or renter's insurance. Even if your stolen property is GPS enabled, and you can show them on a map a 100 ft. circle where it is, you won't get any help (Not if you're "little people" anyway. A corporation with a stolen prototype will get plenty of help.).

Violent or not, thieves are scum. I'd happily replace every single drug offender, of any kind or level, in prison with a thief.

Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist?

[nbauman]

Well for one thing, the population of Denmark is 89.6% Danish. Finland is effectively ethnically homogeneous as well.

Homogeneity breeds better understanding and better community outcomes. Less fear of the other, more ability to emphasize with your neighbor who happened to get in trouble.

In other words, nothing like the United States. Make no mistake, immigration and diversity have good effects, but it has some pretty breathtaking challenges as well.

They are also economically homogeneous. That is, they have almost no poverty.

I've compared the distribution of income in US and Scandinavian countries. You can divide US families into 5 levels based on their income. In Sweden, the bottom 2 levels are missing.

Swedes have the same income as the middle and two upper income levels in the US. They're all middle class and upper class, without the poverty.

Re:Not the Issue, Leaving the situation is!

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I whole heartedly agree. I was in trouble w/ the law a little bit for "traffic" offenses. Every cop knew my car. Finally, after an overnighter, I was convinced I couldn't stay. I left it all. Moved away from town with few possessions.

Leaving my life behind, starting over, made a HUGE difference. Now, I'm quite the happy, productive member of society.

Re:Not the Issue, Leaving the situation is!

[TWX]

I think that's the crux of it for ex-cons, but not for the reasons most people think.

When a former convict goes back into the same community that he committed his crimes in, he's probably going to fall back into roughly the same life that he had before as that life was probably the path of least-resistance for that neighborhood. Put him into a different neighborhood and he has to learn a new way to live, and there's a greater chance over the previous one that it will not include crime. No guarantee, but it's probably better odds.