[fsckboy]

>That’s not recidivism, which is the return to committing crimes after release.

you raise an interesting point, and I did a bit of a dive into various dictionaries, new and old: chances of re-incarceration after release is an important aspect of criminology and public policy, but it's not built into the word recidivism.

recidivism is "backsliding", so it's more a case of "draw a line or a gradient, then measure recidivism across that line or gradient"

in the context of prisoners, it's probably a good idea to be clear about the sense of the definition chosen.