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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.
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?
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.
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?