RECIDIVISM IN CALIFORNIA

Recidivism in California

Abstract

America's prison system has become extremely overcrowded and managing it has become a job of staggering proportions. In 2001, there were 1.4 million men and women incarcerated in state and federal correctional institutions. This overcrowding has increased the cost to operate prisons at alarming rates. Due to a high recidivism rate, many experts believe that lack of rehabilitation has played a great role in this increase.

Recidivism in California

Introduction

Recidivism rates are often used by politicians and academics alike to justify criminal justice policy and practices of punishment. Politicians and judges who follow the “Get tough on crime” doctrine routinely point to high rates of reoffending as a reason to increase sanctions placed on first-time offenders and recidivists alike. By using this philosophy, increasingly tougher sanctions and policies have been imposed, such as the “Three-Strikes” policy introduced first in California.

Conversely, many academics see high rates of recidivism not as a reason to impose stiffer sanctions but rather as a failure of the current system to deal accurately and effectively with offenders and reduce crime. Accordingly, they use recidivism rates to demonstrate that alternatives to imprisonment are necessary to deter crime, instead of the increase that some politicians espouse.

The Problem

Anyone who watches television or reads a newspaper has seen examples of the lack of justice in the United States. Our jails and prisons have become warehouses for criminals. Many who are repeat offenders or substance abusers? Are these the people who receive the rehabilitation they need to become a citizen standing? They are being released without commercial life skills abroad.

This can lead to thousands of people returning to life of crime and, therefore, becoming one of the many repeat offenders. In many cases of substance abusers, which are released with no treatment of addictions? Instead, it ordered the court to seek the same treatment. (Davis 2007)

Table 1 (page 2) shows California recidivism rates, variously defined, for offenders convicted of different crimes. One can see that the three-year 'recidivism rate' for California prisoners can range from a low of 27% (if just counting those resentenced to prison) to a high of 70% (if counting rearrests). Table 1 also shows the differences in recidivism by crime category. For example, property offenders were more likely to be rearrested or reconvicted than other offenders, with a reconviction rate over 15 percentage points higher than that of violent offenders.

Proposed solution

If the prison system can be reformed to rehabilitate and treat prisoners better cope with their lives, I think the number of repeat offenders could be reduced. We see that substance abuse is a disease and we have to treat the disease, until treatment of the disease, the problem will reoccur.Scope

In this article I will discuss why our prisons seem to fail in rehabilitation. I will look at what programs are in place and how they perform. It is my hope to find is that if you put programs in place, help us stop the prison population increased by repeat ...