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Fox Mueller

Professor Sarah Tavis

ENG 98

20 November 2019

Recidivism: What Do We Know?

The United States of America has the highest recidivism rates in the world. When you

learn the definition of recidivism, it doesn’t seem surprising. The definition of recidivism is “the

tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend”. In the U.S., people are proud of themselves for

being the number one pertaining to a lot of things - media consumption, billionaire culture, oil

production – but they don’t seem to talk about being the number one jailer in any given country.

As of 2013, the United States has 670 prisoners for every 100,000 citizens and sits at the world’s

highest recidivism rate, 76.6%. But when it comes to people who re-offend and are recycled

through the prison system, it leaves us to wonder how the government take can take action.

While prisons have high populations and seemingly can’t focus on every inmate, the justice

system is able to lower these state-to-state rates using programs that lower recidivism rates, ones

proven to be successful, along with giving the incarcerated population the help they need.

To put the prison system into perspective, the statistics start high. Wendy Sawyer and

Peter Wagner, two journalists who founded the Prison Policy Initiative, tell us in their article

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019 that:

The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,719

state prisons, 109 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163

local jails, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration
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detention facilities, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and

prisons in the U.S. territories.

When it comes to actual recidivism rates on their own, they vary from state to state.

California currently holds 110,000 inmates and has a recidivism rate of 65%, whereas Arizona

currently holds 41,000 inmates and has a recidivism rate of 24.6%. This information begs the

question of how Arizona holds the lowest in the country, and what we can do to follow in the

same footsteps.

While talking about the American prison complex, it’s impossible to leave race out of the

conversation. There are certain communities in this country that see much higher imprisonment

rates than others. Migrant, indigenous, Black, and lower socioeconomic communities, for

example, all experience much higher rates of imprisonment than most white people. Such

communities disproportionately feel the detrimental effects of the prison system, through the

incarceration process itself, as well as the stress, trauma and discrimination that continues after

release. In America, wrongful convictions for black defendants are seven times more likely in

murder cases and twelve times more common in cases of drug possession than their white

counterparts. Innocent black individuals also spend longer amounts of time incarcerated while

awaiting exoneration and are far more likely to have police misconduct as a contributing factor

in their wrongful convictions than white individuals. Their re-offending rates are three times

higher than others.

In the United States, Black men have the highest rates of recidivism, despite having the

lowest rates of risk. A study done by researchers at the University of Iowa, the University of

Florida, and the University of Connecticut looked at the effects of different risk factors of 21,462

black and white men and women released from various North Carolina state prisons. Stephanie
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C. Kennedy, assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut

says about her research:

In our study, the most potent predictor of recidivism was being a Black male, even

though Black men had less contact with the criminal justice system and few of the risk

factors traditionally associated with recidivism. This suggests that beyond individual risk,

other factors, including racism and implicit bias, as well as poverty and employment

opportunities in the local community, are driving recidivism.

When it comes to the topic of people who re-offend, there isn’t typically a common

factor. In common risk factor assessments in American prisons and jails, they typically take into

account things like current age, education level, marital status, employment status, current

substance use, and residential stability. These people who are released and re-offend are

seemingly different, but asking the question of why leads us to a seemingly obvious answer. In

the United States, prisons and jails are focused mainly on punishment, not reform. In the article

The Missing Link in Reentry from “Corrections Daily”, Philidelphia corrections officer John A.

Shuford states “If released inmates walk out of the prison where they had been marginalized,

alienated and de-socialized, their chance of success is greatly diminished”. In an American

prison, there aren’t often any steps that can be made to reduce rates of re-offence, but the ones

that do offer programs have been proven to be successful.

In the 1970s, prisons were often treated with an “us vs them” mentality. The justice

system believed that once somebody was convicted, there was no way they would be able to

redeem themselves, and that nothing worked. As a result of these predetermined thoughts, prison
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populations shot up and states passed truth-in-sentencing laws and/or “three-strikes" to ensure

the incarceration of who they thought were “untreatable offenders”. Not surprisingly, at the same

time, funding and general interest to start new programs to reduce the amount of people was

scarce and hard to find. When these people thought that nothing worked, they felt there was no

reason to work to find something that did.

Recidivism rate reduction programs in prisons and jails have a wide array of different

processes, and no person is the same, so their rates of success seem to range. In “The Journal of

Correctional Education”, John H. Esperian, a correctional education specialist, asserts in The

Effect of Prison Education Programs on Recidivism that educational programs are proven to both

lower recidivism rates and give the incarcerated the skills they need to possess in order to

succeed. In agreement, Steven Klein of the US department of education writes, “American

prisoners have consistently tested at the lowest levels of educational achievement, and at the

highest levels of illiteracy and educational disability of any segment in our society."

Aside from the many education programs, some promote entrepreneurship, self-help

support groups among addicts, and even offer the incarcerated population mental and physical

health services. With the statistics and numbers that the United States holds in recidivism and

incarceration, it becomes increasingly more important to be imaginative when it comes to

recidivism programs so that no one person is left high and dry, so to speak. Basic education and

life skills are taught to educate and reform, to help not just one inmate, but a community. In The

Effectiveness of Adult Basic Education and Life-Skills Programs In Reducing Recidivism: A

Review and Assessment of the Research, Dawn K. Cecil, Daniella Drapkin, Doris Layton

Mackenzie and Laura J. Hickman conducted a study on inmates who received educational

programs and how it reflected recidivism rates. Their findings were simple, but a bit vague,
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stating that “based on the Maryland criteria, we conclude that adult basic education programs

show promise as a means of reducing offender recidivism”.

Wondering how the United States can come around from the system that currently affects

two million people is the first step. Putting it simply, most American prisons and jails don’t care

about the people behind bars for many reasons. If a prison were to put a price tag on a prisoner

for $50 per day, that means their prison can theoretically earn $50,000 per day on a prison that

houses 1,000 inmates. On the other hand, it costs the general public various amounts of money

depending on the state – in Maryland, where the prison population is around 2,000 people, it

costs around $58,000 to house one inmate, whereas in Washington, the prison population is

roughly 17,000 with a cost of roughly $38,000 per inmate. In the end, privatized prisons and jails

don’t have a problem with incarcerated people being recycled through and passed around due to

the amount of money they’re making from each of them. Recidivism reducing programs do not

benefit them, despite knowing how their inmates are affected by these programs.

Reducing recidivism is simply reducing harm, whether it is to the incarcerated population

or the general public. People who have been passed through the justice system are often not

given the chance to redeem themselves, whether it is necessary or not. They are justifiably angry

and upset with the things they have been given, or the lack thereof. Officials and people with

judicial credits can’t seem to agree on this topic of discussion, thinking that people can be

redeemed, leaving many people left within the justice system for their entire lives. Reducing the

United States’ high recidivism rates simply begins with empathy and understanding, along with

an open-minded approach and noting that there are things that can be done.
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Works Cited

Cecil, Dawn K, et al. The Effectiveness of Adult Basic Education and Life-Skills Programs In

Reducing Recidivism: A Review and Assessment of the Research. June 2000.

Esperian, John H. “The Effect of Prison Education Programs on Recidivism.” Journal of

Correctional Education.

Sawyer, Wendy, and Peter Wagner. “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019.” Mass

Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019 | Prison Policy Initiative,

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html.

Shuford, John A. “The Missing Link in Reentry - AVP-USA, Inc.” AVP, 6 Sept. 2018,

https://avpusa.org/the-missing-link-in-reentry/.

staff, Science X. “Black Men Have Higher Rates of Recidivism despite Lower Risk Factors:

Study.” Phys.org, Phys.org, 23 Oct. 2018, https://phys.org/news/2018-10-black-men-higher-

recidivism-factors.html.
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1. What are the strengths of your essay? In other words, what are you most proud of in

this essay? This essay was a pretty big challenge for me, but most of it came pretty easily as I

had a pretty clear direction of where I wanted to go, and had quite a bit of knowledge on the

topic beforehand. So I think my biggest strength was being well-versed on the topic before

starting the writing process.

2. What challenges did you have writing this essay, and how would you revise it? In

other words, when you look at the assignment requirements, what do you need to do in order to

better meet those requirements and how will you do this? I think I had a bigger problem with the

citations and making sure all citations were properly integrated. That along with figuring out the

structure of the essay were notable challenges.

3. What did you learn about your writing process from writing and revising this essay,

and what will you take from writing this essay that will help you when you write your next essay?

Learning that writing a research paper is infinitely different than a narrative essay, and

discerning the two of them plays a huge part in writing future essays. It’s a completely different

feeling and tone than what I’m used to writing.