| That PDF you gave makes such an excellent argument that I thought it would be helpful to quote the best part: "When criminologists examine prison populations, they see a concentration of repeat offenders, most of whom will recidivate. Low-risk offenders enter and exit prison once, so in any survey of a prison stock, low-risk offenders are underrepresented as a proportion of the offender population. An analogy is helpful: A Mall Exit Survey Survey researchers sometimes use mall exit surveys to estimate shoppers’ purchasing habits. Suppose that: •25% of mall visitors go to the mall once per day. •25% go once per week. •25% go once per month. •25% go once per year. A naïve one week exit survey of visitors exiting the mall will find that: •85% of mall visitors go to the mall once per day. •12% go once per week. •3% go once per month. •Fewer than 1% go once per year. The problem is that high-rate mall visitors churn, leaving an impression that most shoppers are frequent visitors." Quoted from "Criminal Recidivism: Most Incarcerated Offenders do not Return to Prison", by William Rhodes, from the link in parent |
But the slides still find evidence of recidivism using a less biased offender-based analysis. Moreover they find that the people are still more likely to return to prison the longer they have stayed in prison. The numbers are lower, but are definitely there. Ancestor’s claim about prisons creating criminals still stands.
Then there is the issue of low level drug offenders returning to prison for violent crimes in the next round. It would be interesting to see the numbers on that.