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'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.
it's that the guy that landed you in jail while he got away free is going to get you into trouble again
There are a lot of things that can be done to reform prisoners and help them avoid recidivism. For that to happen however you have to actually want to help them rebuild their lives. American "justice" is more about getting revenge and punishing criminals Puritan style. No one really cares what happens afterwards.
In Canada there are basically two prison systems. One, for those sentenced to less than two years, is run by the province (thus a common sentence is "two years less a day"). The second, for those sentenced to two years or more, is run by the Federal Government. Recidivism rates for those sentenced to provincial jails is roughly 45% re-offend (statistics are lifelong, not three years as in the parent post's research). For the Federal system, it's less than 5%. Provincial inmates are released to the community they came from, while Federal inmates are paroled to a different community. They balance the releases by placing people based on the incarceration rate in a given community; in other words if 5 criminals are sent to Federal prison in a town, then 5 are released to that town, but are not from that town.
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.
The number one factor I've seen in recidivism is that after they offend, they continue to have the same friends as before and most of their friends are scumbags who either enable or encourage bad behavior. This is why the frequent fliers have such a difficult time getting through probation without violating. All the good intentions in the world don't matter if you spend your days hanging out with friends who are always getting high or hanging out at clubs where people get into fights. It only shows up as a geographical correlation in this study because criminals tend to be concentrated in certain neighborhoods regardless of whether they're incarcerated or not.
The little old lady who gets tipsy one day and slugs a cop if a very different probationer than the guy who slugs a cop because the cop is breaking up a fight between his buddies and a rival gang. The little old lady will go back to not engaging in criminal activity. She might moderate her alcohol intake better in the future. The ganger will go back to doing gang shit, which consists mostly of activities that will violate ones probation.
Criminals don't get back to prison through some mysterious osmosis process, they reoffend because it's hard to break bad habits, especially when your life is a giant maze of bad habits and people encouraging you to engage in them.
Pretty obvious, but sometimes the simple things need saying. That's a quote from the Bible, by the way. Evidently they had similar problems 2000 years ago.
:p
People are social animals and they are generally aiming to fit in with some social group or other. Going from a drug/petty crime tolerant lifestyle to a clean start often requires changing your circle of friends. I have a friend who did this and completely turned his life around. Just to clarify, I'm one of his new friends, not his old ones.
really do make a difference..
Yes, they do.
Move the ex-cons into my neighborhood, full of investment bankers and corporate executives. And they'll learn how not to get caught.
Have gnu, will travel.
About half of the people incarcerated in the US are in for non-violent crimes. You make it sound like it's the majority. There has been a steady decrease in violent crime for decades.
So who do we blame when violent crime keeps decreasing but our prison populations keep rising?
Well, if we eliminate all the people who just wanted to get high quietly in the privacy of their own home and provided treatment instead of prison time for all the people who are in there as the result of alcohol and drug abuse, we could probably close all but one existing prison. Funnily many of the examples you provided are driven by the enforcement of white supremacy perpetuated by the anti-drug establishment. Which, by the way, is VERY good for the profits of the privatized prison system. Give someone in a community no opportunities other than being thugs and many of them will be thugs. This ought not to be surprising. Use lies and bad science to enact prohibition-style laws on substances no more harmful than alcohol and you'll see black markets arise, along with the violence associated with those black markets. Most people don't become broken for no reason, either. Address a few simple causes and you could significantly reduce the prison population in the country, the taxpayer burden associated with that population and increase the overall safety of the society. The for-profit prisons would really rather people didn't realize this.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Theft still accounts for quite the minority of people behind bars. Generally you might get probation once for grand theft, after that its the slammer.
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.
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.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
Imagine all the people...
...it's that bad group of friends that will get you into trouble.
-Styopa
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cm...
Overview of Basic Data
(Number Of People Serving Time For Drug Offenses In US Prisons)
Federal: "Between 2001 and 2013, more than half of prisoners serving sentences of more than a year in federal facilities were convicted of drug offenses (table 15 and table 16). On September 30, 2013 (the end of the most recent fiscal year for which federal offense data were available), 98,200 inmates (51% of the federal prison population) were imprisoned for possession, trafficking, or other drug crimes."
State: "Drug offenders comprised 16% (210,200 inmates) of the total state prison population in 2012. Twenty-five percent of female prisoners were serving time for drug offenses, compared to 15% of male prisoners. Similar proportions of white, black, and Hispanic offenders were convicted of drug and public-order crimes."
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.
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.
The criminologists say that there's an aggregation phenomenon -- when you put criminals together in one place, they encourage and teach each other to become criminals. Go to prison and you'll learn how to steal a car.
That's why those boot camps didn't work. They would take young offenders, put them together, and have some father figure yell at them like an army sergeant. But when they put young criminals together, they actually taught each other that crime was acceptable. They wound up with higher re-arrest rates than offenders who didn't go through boot camp.
A lot of times you had some kid who was busted for grass, together with kids who had been committing car theft, burglary, robbery, etc. And they would fight.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You ignorant cretin. Norway has a WHITE population, who are, because of GENETICS, much less likely to commit crime, than the BLACK population of the U.S., who commit far more crime per capita than whites do.
From the Swedish police it would seem:
http://swedenreport.org/2014/1...
I'm the first to take exceptional-sounding news with a large pinch of salt but he appears to have supported it up adequately.
From the Swedish police it would seem:
I see. I take it you don't read Swedish? His own sources doesn't actually say what he claims they say. (Even the vaunted police report he cites doesn't actually say what he says it does.) Yes, we have a growing problem with gang based crime in Sweden (we have a whopping 4000 gang members out of a nine million population, which is 4000 more than only 20-30 years ago). Yes, there are parts of cities in Sweden where police/fire/ambulance etc. have been met with stone throwing. Yes, we have a worrying increase in the number of gang related shootings.
However. All this has to be understood from a backdrop of approximately zero such problems in the past. Hence of course, relatively speaking, we take this very seriously, and we're appalled. As we should be. However, with that said, our crime indicators are still among the lowest in the world, even though gang shootings make the headlines almost every day (it feels like) it's still only a handful per year and our murder rate hasn't even ticked up as a result. Still steady at just over one per 100k/year, which is as close to zero as you're going to get. (Notably it's not any different from mono-ethnical Finland and Norway).
Most notably however, active police work in these areas inevitably reduces the level of overt crime in these areas once they've been in the papers long enough to affect resource allocation. We routinely clean up these areas (by locking up the handful of people who are the real problem) and things are normalised. Until the next time. While we of course are deeply concerned by this pattern, to say that "police have given up" and that there are "no go" zones anywhere in Sweden is taking the current situation much, much too far.
So a "pinch" of salt isn't the appropriate measure here. You need a metric ton. As I say to american friends and family when the inevitable "is it safe?"-question comes; "You being american, your level of street smarts serves you everywhere and anywhere in Sweden. If you behaved like you would in the safest areas of the US, you'd be pretty much OK in the very worst areas here." It's a bit like if Cal Ripken was dropped into a little league game asking the coach who he would have to look out for on the opposing team. The only sensible answer of course being. "No one... But please go easy on them, yeah?"
So, calling any area in Sweden a "police no-go zone" is hyperbole to the level of untruth.
Stefan Axelsson
As a fellow victim of theft I can agree with you on making it a higher priority for LEA. I would like to see better investigations. When I had my CC stolen, and reported it to the police, the detective assigned to my case did nothing, wasn't interested in finding anyone, until at the last minute before he closed the case where he *asked if I would take a polygraph*. I said I didn't believe in polygraphs, and he closed the case, and the bank gave back my money. However, I don't really think being as harsh as possible is the best thing for us as a whole. A man forever behind bars, or unable to get any gainful employment, would never be able to pay restitution.