Sentencing Commission Recidivism Report Available

The North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission and the Division of Adult Correction recently released their Correctional Program Evaluation: Offenders Placed on Probation or Released from Prison in FY 2013—known better as the recidivism report. Every biennial report is interesting—who wouldn’t want to know how present sentencing choices affect future crime?—but this report is especially interesting because it is the first one to include a sizable number of defendants sentenced and supervised after Justice Reinvestment. We can begin to see if the law is working as intended. Under G.S. 164-47, the Sentencing Commission and DAC must jointly report to the General Assembly on the recidivism rates of prisoners and probationers every other year. The report defines recidivism as an arrest, conviction, or subsequent incarceration during a two-year period after being placed on probation or released from imprisonment. The report sample included over 35,000 probationers and nearly 14,000 inmates released from prison. The report slices and dices the recidivism rates for probationers and prisoners in many ways—by gender, race, age, and marital status, among other personal characteristics. I encourage anyone interested in the particulars to read the full report. There are a few things I wanted to highlight in today’s post. More recidivism, or better recordkeeping? The latest recidivism rates for all offenders were consistent with those observed over the past decade. The overall recidivist arrest rate sits at 40 percent. That is up from 31 percent in FY 2002, but the report speculates that the increase has more to do [...]