Why do so many ex-offenders go back to prison? A new study suggests they don't

You can choose to serve the full sentence, and you would not have all of the fees, but you would still have some...like reimbursement of court costs. You're also subject to some classes. Drug offenders, in some states, have to take classes if they want their driver's license back. (even if the offense was not vehicle related in any way).

It's also not a trivial trade-off. Varies by state, but in Texas, for example, you could be choosing between 2.5 years + probation or 5 full years.

Not all felons need SR-22 insurance, but many whose offenses were NOT vehicle related have to have it. Drug convictions, for example, even if it had nothing at all to do with a vehicle.

Like anything with a political undertone, how recidivism rates are calculated is defined by the messenger. A politician wanting to take a hard nose approach to crime is going to want a higher recidivism rate so he/she can say that keeping people in prison reduces crime. On the flip side, the reality is that by providing jobs, education, and general opportunities, upon release there is a less chance that someone will recommit.

The real problem, as someone else pointed out, is that in most cases the individual is set up to fail in the justice system.

I will use myself as an example. I served a one-year supervised felony probation. On the last day of my probation I was cleared by my probation officer. Although technically my probation did not end until midnight, when I met with my probation officer in the morning she gave me a letter stating I had met my obligations and at midnight would be clear from further supervision. I had been planning a move out of the state the following day and in preparation had rented a moving van and was beginning to pack my things. With the van parked in front of my house, an overzealous sheriff deputy who knew I was on probation, stopped to see what was going on. Simply because I had already begun packing the van, he decided he would violate my probation for moving without permission. I was arrested again for a violation and subsequently spent the night in jail until a judge released me the following morning. Luckily my attorney was able to convince the state not to press for additional time and my probation was terminated. It cost me a little over $1000 in additional legal fees (or as my attorney so eloquently put it, do you want me just to play golf with state's attorney or take him to dinner afterwards) for my attorney to handle that for me. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford the costs, however, I have seen first hand how others without the means would have been violated and most likely would have served time or an additional length of probation resulting in additional costs.

While someone else pointed out that high incarceration rates are not entirely to blame on the war on drugs, they are directly related. We live in a society where zero-tolerance laws take precedence over common-sense laws. We incarcerate people at the highest rate in the world. The system is like a giant ponzi scheme. We incarcerate so many people that we have to charge outrageous court and other fees to afford to support the cycle of incarceration. Yet the failure to pay these same fees are often one of the leading reasons that people are violated on probation or parole. We have people serving mandatory sentences for charges that in today's society are no longer crimes. However, if a politician attempts to make a change and get those individuals released they are viewed as being soft on crime. An interesting study would really be a comparison of fees paid to sentence served. I know I was able to essentially pay more in fees to reduce my probation time. Similar to getting a mortgage and paying points up front to reduce your interest rate.

Interesting article... I think many go back because we set them up for failure during reentry. Housing and jobs can discriminate against those with criminal records, making it difficult to reintegrate with society.

While the overrepresentation of the repeat offenders is a valid concern, I feel like this makes a big point out of a relatively small change in conclusion.

  Old Analysis: slightly over half were incarcerated again
  New Analysis: about one third are incarcerated again

So regardless of how you measure it, there's an enormous relative risk of recidivism -- the general population is incarcerated at a mere 0.66% level [1] so that's still a 50x relative risk (compared to a 75x under the old calculation).

There is no avoiding the conclusion that ex-convicts are vastly more likely to perform crimes than the general population. From the perspective of risk management and policy design, 50x vs 75x doesn't seem to change much to me.

And I could forgive a lay person for taking the 50x relative risk to mean "ex convicts tend to return to jail" even if it's "only" 1 in 3. The general rate of incarceration is nowhere near 1 in 3.

[1] http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=107

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