A Look at the 2022 Sentencing Commission Recidivism Report

The North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission released its biennial Correctional Program Evaluation, better known as the Recidivism Report. It is prepared in conjunction with the Division of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, as required by G.S. 164-47. The full report is available here. It covers defendants placed on probation or released from prison in Fiscal Year 2019, and examines their subsequent arrests, convictions, and incarcerations during a two-year follow-up period. Overall recidivism rates. Of the 47,000 people covered by the report, 41 percent were arrested within two years. Probationers (37 percent) were less likely to be re-arrested than prisoners (49 percent). The recidivist incarceration rate for inmates released from prison was 36 percent. Overall rates were down from previous years, with some of that reduction perhaps attributable to the slow-down in court operations as a result of COVID-19. See Recidivism Report at 125 (“Noticeable reductions in all three measures of recidivism for the current sample were observed when compared to the FY 2017 sample – 41% compared to 44% for recidivist arrests, 16% compared to 21% for recidivist convictions, and 21% compared to 23% for recidivist incarcerations, respectively.”) Risk assessments. As you may know, the DACJJ performs a risk-needs assessment on all probationers and prisoners. (I talked about Probation’s risk assessment process here.) The assessment for probationers places offenders in five “supervision level” categories, from Level 1 (most restrictive) to Level 5 (least restrictive). The recidivism rates for probationers in the [...]