Cja/204 Recidivisim Project

Recidivism Project

Cresha Sanders

CJA/204

July 8, 2012

John Eckert

Recidivism

Committing a crime and serving time for the crime committed, and then getting released back into society in hopes of never returning is the ideal thing to happen for an offender. Unfortunately committing the same crime or even another crime and returning back into the prison population is recidivism and the cure to putting an end to this is still in the works. Legislators, community activist, parents, families, and criminal justice workers are still heavy at work trying to figure out what they can put into action to help offenders stay away from the horrible world of recidivism.

Contributions to Recidivism

Studies and data show that the common factors taken into consideration in contributing to recidivism is the basics; age, gender, race, length of time of the offender has had a criminal background and the severity of their criminal background, education level and skill level, and their behavior while being incarcerated ("Florida Department Of Corrections", 2001). Other factors to be considered are the length of an offender’s incarceration, the prison’s performance based on the rates of recidivism, the types of offenses committed by the offender, what level they are upon release, and how much time they served for their offense, employment after release, substance use after release, and how much supervision one had or did not have ("Florida Department Of Corrections", 2001). One thing is for sure in the statistics, African Americans are more likely to reoffend and so are youth.

Prison Programs

Some prisons have a program, under different names, but it deals with violent offenders and puppies. These offenders are given puppies to raise and train to become service dogs to the disabled and sometimes canines that detect explosives for law enforcement. This program teaches these violent offenders to get in touch with their gentle side and that it’s ok, they don’t always have to be the aggressor ("Huffington Post", 2012).

New York once had a college program for inmates where research was conducted and proved that in-prison college programs significantly reduced recidivism ("New York Nonprofit Press", 2012). Completing in-prison substance abuse programs followed by a taking a substance abuse program in the community proves to have reduced recidivism (Hinkle, 1996-2012). According to "Post Local" (1996-2012), Sarah Scarbrough did some research that gave her feedback of the positive effect the Kingdom Life Ministries Men in