'Prisonized' Neighborhoods Make Recidivism More Likely 164
sciencehabit writes: One of the most important questions relating to incarceration and rehabilitation is how to discourage recidivism. After a prison stint, about half of convicts wind up back in the slammer within three years. But sociologist David Kirk noticed a pattern: convicts who moved away from their old neighborhood when released from prison had a much smaller recidivism rate. Kirk found that the concentration of former prisoners in a neighborhood had a dramatic effect on the likelihood of committing another offense (abstract). "So if an ex-con’s average chance of returning to prison after just 1 year was 22%—as it was in 2006—an additional new parolee in the neighborhood boosted that chance to nearly 25%. The numbers climb for each new parolee added. In some of the most affected neighborhoods—where five of every thousand residents were recent parolees—nearly 35% were back behind bars within a year of getting out." The rates stayed consistent even when controlling for chronic poverty and other neighborhood characteristics.
If movies have ever taught me anything (Score:5, Funny)
it's that the guy that landed you in jail while he got away free is going to get you into trouble again
Not the Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of things that can be done to reform prisoners and help them avoid recidivism. For that to happen however you have to actually want to help them rebuild their lives. American "justice" is more about getting revenge and punishing criminals Puritan style. No one really cares what happens afterwards.
Re:Not the Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying that criminals don't exist? (Score:1, Interesting)
The prison system is only half of the issue. Let's not kid ourselves, those in prison aren't there just for the hell of it. Many of them have in fact committed very serious crimes, and should in fact be locked up for the good of society. When a thug in a gang does a drive-by shooting and kills several people, some of them innocent bystanders, he should be in jail. When a thug peddles harmful drugs to kids, he should be in jail. When a thug steals from a shop and roughs up the cashier, he should be in jail,
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About half of the people incarcerated in the US are in for non-violent crimes. You make it sound like it's the majority. There has been a steady decrease in violent crime for decades.
So who do we blame when violent crime keeps decreasing but our prison populations keep rising?
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violent crime keeps decreasing but our prison populations keep rising
So
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Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that theft is an uncommon crime though. It's just that the police don't want to be bothered investigating thefts, arresting thieves, or recovering your property. A stolen car will get a bit of attention. But for just about anything else, the best you can realistically count on is them letting you go into a station and fill out a report that a desk officer will sign and photocopy so you can file a claim with your homeowner's or renter's insurance. Even if your stolen property is GPS enabled, and you can show them on a map a 100 ft. circle where it is, you won't get any help (Not if you're "little people" anyway. A corporation with a stolen prototype will get plenty of help.).
Violent or not, thieves are scum. I'd happily replace every single drug offender, of any kind or level, in prison with a thief.
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Re: Are you saying that criminals don't exist? (Score:2)
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Nice stab at Olympia
Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, if we eliminate all the people who just wanted to get high quietly in the privacy of their own home and provided treatment instead of prison time for all the people who are in there as the result of alcohol and drug abuse, we could probably close all but one existing prison.
Even if we just include federal/state prisons, there are about 1,800 existing prisons. Do you seriously think that nonviolent drug use and the results of drug and alchohol abuse account for 99.94% of all of our prisoners?
Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, my Socialist-Totaltarian regime has a multi-pronged approach to addressing this:
1. All children will be confiscated from their parents and birth and raised in sanitary state-run facilities. Processes will be put in place to insure that no violent or sexual abuse of the children will be possible.
2. All children will be reversibly sterilized at puberty. Anyone wishing to breed will be required to pass a parental competency test.
3. For anyone unable to pass a parental competency test, the state will choose a partner based on specially-designed algorithms designed to insure the happiness of the couple.
4. All religion will be illegal except for the state-run one, which will involve Smurfs. Non-Smurfy behavior will be dealt with harshly.
I predict that my society would reach the "Utopia" stage within three generations.
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I for one welcome our new socialist-totalitarian-smurfist overlords.
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You ignorant cretin. Norway has a WHITE population, who are, because of GENETICS, much less likely to commit crime, than the BLACK population of the U.S., who commit far more crime per capita than whites do.
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http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cm... [drugwarfacts.org]
Overview of Basic Data
(Number Of People Serving Time For Drug Offenses In US Prisons)
Federal: "Between 2001 and 2013, more than half of prisoners serving sentences of more than a year in federal facilities were convicted of drug offenses (table 15 and table 16). On September 30, 2013 (the end of the most recent fiscal year for which federal offense data were available), 98,200 inmates (51% of the federal prison population) were imprisoned for possession, trafficking, or othe
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Funnily many of the examples you provided are driven by the enforcement of white supremacy perpetuated by the anti-drug establishment.
Here's somebody who developed that idea for the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) and made a good argument for the racism motivation.
http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2015/... [bmj.com]
Art Cohen and Selwyn Ray: The lessons of late April in Baltimore
8 May, 15
BMJ
After years of suffering and resignation about disrespect and mistreatment at the hands of local police, young and older African-American residents of inner city west and east Baltimore, joined by others, came together these past two weeks to say: “we’v
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Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well for one thing, the population of Denmark is 89.6% Danish. Finland is effectively ethnically homogeneous as well.
Homogeneity breeds better understanding and better community outcomes. Less fear of the other, more ability to emphasize with your neighbor who happened to get in trouble.
In other words, nothing like the United States. Make no mistake, immigration and diversity have good effects, but it has some pretty breathtaking challenges as well.
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Well for one thing, the population of Denmark is 89.6% Danish. Finland is effectively ethnically homogeneous as well.
Homogeneity breeds better understanding and better community outcomes. Less fear of the other, more ability to emphasize with your neighbor who happened to get in trouble.
In other words, nothing like the United States. Make no mistake, immigration and diversity have good effects, but it has some pretty breathtaking challenges as well.
Other countries have ethnically diverse populations and yet have fewer problems that the USA. Their northern neighbor Canada comes to mind as an example.
Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well for one thing, the population of Denmark is 89.6% Danish. Finland is effectively ethnically homogeneous as well.
Homogeneity breeds better understanding and better community outcomes. Less fear of the other, more ability to emphasize with your neighbor who happened to get in trouble.
In other words, nothing like the United States. Make no mistake, immigration and diversity have good effects, but it has some pretty breathtaking challenges as well.
They are also economically homogeneous. That is, they have almost no poverty.
I've compared the distribution of income in US and Scandinavian countries. You can divide US families into 5 levels based on their income. In Sweden, the bottom 2 levels are missing.
Swedes have the same income as the middle and two upper income levels in the US. They're all middle class and upper class, without the poverty.
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I assume those bottom two levels you're referring to don't apply to the 50+ no-go areas in Sweden where the police aren't able to operate effectively?
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No, of course not. As those "no-go areas" don't actually exist in Sweden.
Seriously, where do you people get this crap?
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From the Swedish police it would seem:
http://swedenreport.org/2014/1... [swedenreport.org]
I'm the first to take exceptional-sounding news with a large pinch of salt but he appears to have supported it up adequately.
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From the Swedish police it would seem:
I see. I take it you don't read Swedish? His own sources doesn't actually say what he claims they say. (Even the vaunted police report he cites doesn't actually say what he says it does.) Yes, we have a growing problem with gang based crime in Sweden (we have a whopping 4000 gang members out of a nine million population, which is 4000 more than only 20-30 years ago). Yes, there are parts of cities in Sweden where police/fire/ambulance etc. have been met with stone throwing. Yes, we have a worrying increase
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Okay, so how about this one from only a few days ago: http://swedenreport.org/2015/0... [swedenreport.org]
Jacob Ekström is a police officer working in these areas. He has this to say in the latest issue of Forsking & Framsteg, the premier scientific journal in Sweden:
“The situation is slipping from our grasp,” he says about infamous enclaves Tensta and Rinkeby. “If we’re in pursuit of a vehicle, it can evade us by driving to certain neighborhoods where a lone patro
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Okay, so how about this one from only a few days ago: http://swedenreport.org/2015/0 [swedenreport.org]...
Hyperbole. That was already included in my previous reply.
That one police officer with no official or other standing says one thing doesn't a summer make. (Why he says that I don't know, but there are a number of mundane reasons).
Now, yes, we're having problems in certain areas. And they seem to stick. No denying that. BUT, by that token, why take the word of one policeman when it comes to "no-go zones". We've had much worse in the very city [wikipedia.org] I'm writing this from. That was a real loss of control of general
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Except it's not just one link, there are many more, to quote from the linked article:
National newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, explicitly using the term “no-go zones”:
http://www.svd.se/opinion/leda... [www.svd.se]
National newspaper Aftonbladet on the rampant ISIS recruitment taking place in these areas:
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyhe... [aftonbladet.se]
Dr Magnus Ranstorp on the rapid growth of radicalized Islamists (in English):
http://foreignpo [foreignpolicy.com]
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I do have a big problem with people obscuring the truth, and thus far you've presented no compelling evidence to suggest the above information is untrue.
I can't since you don't read Swedish and obviously don't believe me who do.
All the above is media echo chamber from one police report. Even if you failed to link it correctly its this one. [polisen.se]
Now, I'm not going to translate the lot for you, as you wouldn't believe it anyway, but just the first sentence sums it up quite nicely "I Sverige finns i nulÃget 55 geografiska omrÃ¥den dÃr lokala kriminella nÃtverk anses ha negativ pÃ¥verkan pÃ¥ lokalsamhÃllet". -> In Sw
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So, by that token, it doesn't even matter that we have "no-go zones" then, as the people in them don't get up to much anyway... Police presence or not...
Aha, so you admit you have no-go zones then.
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So, by that token, it doesn't even matter that we have "no-go zones" then, as the people in them don't get up to much anyway... Police presence or not...
Aha, so you admit you have no-go zones then.
You are supposed to put a little "smiley" thing when you intentionally misstate someone's posting. :-)
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I've never liked this argument.
Partly it's because the math is clearly wrong. Canada is roughly 1/4 people whose first language is French. Another quarter were not born there, and a much larger fraction then in the US are Aboriginal (which is what the call the people we'd call "native americans"). Which means that under this theory it should be a dystopian hell-scape of ethnic violence because only half the community is the majority ethnic group. They do fine. Sweden is 14% foreign-born, and has had it's ow
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Sweden is 14% foreign-born, and has had it's own ethnic minorities for centuries. It's also fine.
Depends on your definition of fine...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Stockholm_riots. [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosengård#Violence [wikipedia.org]
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He's comparing it to the US. In particular he's arguing our prison population will always be high because we've got so many non-white-people. Sweden's prison population is below 1/2 per thousand [theguardian.com], or 0.0472%. We are at 0.94%.
As for the riots, when's the last time we went a full 20 years without a race riot? If you switch that to "race riot that killed people" the number goes to 25.
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Actually, I am not stating anything about skin color. Ethnicity can mean "Irish" or "Italian", and it certainly used to be a problem back in the day. Of course, it doesn't help if you are both brown and foreign.
And I am not suggesting that we'll always have a "high" population in jail, however, there will be a tendency for it to be high-er. That's because the groups in power become fearful of a larger segment of the population. The "high" prison population in the US is that, but also the War on Drugs, wh
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But Canada isn't Apples to Oranges. In any way, shape or form. And Canada has a worse diversity problem then us, especially if you're gonna go with a non-racial definition of ethnicity and include all the Allophones in their own little boxes.
If we cut down on our sentencing guidelines, and insisted the criminal justice system treat black suspects with the same respect it does white suspects, we could probably cut our imprisonment rate from 700ish per 100k to 120ish per 100k like the Canadians. If we outrigh
Re:Are you saying that criminals don't exist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's not kid ourselves, those in prison aren't there just for the hell of it.
You're kidding yourself. No other country imprisons as many people, either absolutely or per capita, and most other countries have far less violence than we do. And don't think we have less crime because of the prisons. America's prison rate soared after crime rates began to fall. Also, not every state has engaged in the prison building frenzy, and they have seen crime fall even faster. Prisons are incredibly expensive, diverting resources that could be beneficial. They breed more crime than the deter, and not just through recidivism, but also by destroying families and even neighborhoods. Boys growing up in fatherless homes, especially if that father is in the clink, are very likely to grow up into the next generation of criminals. Neighborhoods with a lot of "missing men" tend to be festering cesspools of poverty, substance abuse, illegitimate births, and criminality.
Nonviolent offenders should receive alternative punishments, so they can continue to be productive people, with family and social connections. Prison should be reserved for violent offenders that are a physical danger to other people.
On the bright side, this problem is finally getting some positive attention. Both Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul have spoken out against the "culture of incarceration", so hopefully it will get some attention in the 2016 campaign.
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No other country imprisons as many people, either absolutely or per capita, and most other countries have far less violence than we do. And don't think we have less crime because of the prisons.
The criminologists say that there's an aggregation phenomenon -- when you put criminals together in one place, they encourage and teach each other to become criminals. Go to prison and you'll learn how to steal a car.
That's why those boot camps didn't work. They would take young offenders, put them together, and have some father figure yell at them like an army sergeant. But when they put young criminals together, they actually taught each other that crime was acceptable. They wound up with higher re-arrest
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the point is no one is born a criminal.
they are made.
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One of the most important questions relating to incarceration and rehabilitation is how to discourage recidivism.
The entire system is designed to encourage recidivism.
One of the most important questions is what things can be done to discourage recidivism -- and how to avoid doing those things without being too obvious about it.
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You misunderstoood. The prison system is for-profit, and every businessman knows that you need repeat customers. Repeat offenders are also especially easy to suspect and convict, so the cops and district attorneys can also show how effective they are.
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This sounds like the logic behind dismantling advanced/remedial classes. Let's throw everyone together and the good students can "uplift" the bad. So the good students get hurt and perform less well..
I guess you're right, I definitely feel once you fall off the wagon it's on you to get back on. Once you cross certain lines I'm personally not sure I care about your well being and simply want to minimize the chance you can hurt me again. I will grant you many people fall because they are in bad situations, we
Re:Not the Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like convicts get out of prison and they're reset to a neutral state and can try hard and do ok in life.
Ex-convicts are actively persecuted by society. It'd be like if you fell off the wagon and then a buffalo decided to sit on you.
It's not just "on you" to get back on the wagon.
And a significant portion of the population is now an ex-prisoner or ex-felon. "In 2008, about one in 33 working-age adults was an ex-prisoner, and about one in 15 working-age adults was an ex-felon. Among working-age men in that same year, about one in 17 was an ex-prisoner and one in eight was an ex-felon." http://www.cepr.net/press-cent... [cepr.net]
Millions of people. Your short sighted "I personally don't care about your well being because you fucked up and I'm scared of you" mentality would be like saying, "Why should I pay taxes for public schools if I don't have kids?"
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There is no such thing as an "ex-felon". Once a person commits a felony, they are a felon. The end of their prison sentence does not undo their prior choice and actions. At best, time in prison has prevented them from committing further felonies for that span of time.
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"I personally don't care about your well being because you fucked up and I'm scared of you" mentality would be like saying, "Why should I pay taxes for public schools if I don't have kids?"
No, I'm happy to pay my taxes to put them in jail and pay for their life in jail. Once they get out my debt to them ends, I would rather they lived somewhere else. A better analogy is I'll pay for your kids to go to school, but once they graduate they're on their own.
And a significant portion of the population is now
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Have you stopped to think about the implications of what you are saying? If Jim Crow laws were still in force, would you really accuse people who broke those laws of untrustworthiness and poor impulse control? If your answer is 'yes', then shame on you, and I don't trust you. If your answer is 'no', then I would ask you how a desire to smoke a joint is fundamentally different from a desire to sit at the front of the bus. I really think you need to put your argument back on the stove and let it cook a little longer - it ain't done yet.
Thank you for restoring some of my faith in humanity. I swear these just-world-fantasy types want to drag our country in to the dirt.
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And a significant portion of the population is now an ex-prisoner or ex-felon. "In 2008, about one in 33 working-age adults was an ex-prisoner, and about one in 15 working-age adults was an ex-felon. Among working-age men in that same year, about one in 17 was an ex-prisoner and one in eight was an ex-felon." http://www.cepr.net/press-cent... [cepr.net]
It's dramatically worse for black men. In some cities, a third of the young black men are in jail or otherwise in the criminal justice system. That seriously affects the marriage rates among black women.
A criminal record takes away opportunities for work, education, housing, and welfare.
It's like bringing back slavery.
Re: Not the Issue (Score:2)
Amen. I rent apartments and regularly rent to men who are non-violent felons. They can't find rents in complexes where credit checks and references are expected.
I have had no troubles, save for one out of 12 over 9 years.
Many were found guilty of some form of violating a restraining order, repeat offenders, and in some states that gets you a felony.
They have a hard time finding work, but seem to keep jobs and pay their bills. For these at least, this is better than prison.
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100% of inmates who are guilty of a crime
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There are a lot of things that can be done to reform prisoners and help them avoid recidivism. For that to happen however you have to actually want to help them rebuild their lives. American "justice" is more about getting revenge and punishing criminals Puritan style. No one really cares what happens afterwards.
While it is good that you personaly care about "what happens afterwards" (helping ex-criminals rebuild their lives is a good thing some good people may choose to do - IF the ex-criminal must want that also...), this is not the responsibility of "justice", since its responsibility are:
a) reform the criminal (if this is possible) so he may return to society as a reformed non-criminal free man
b) protect society from the criminal while he is still a danger because of his criminal ways
c) punishing the crimina
Re:Not the Issue, Leaving the situation is! (Score:4, Interesting)
I whole heartedly agree. I was in trouble w/ the law a little bit for "traffic" offenses. Every cop knew my car. Finally, after an overnighter, I was convinced I couldn't stay. I left it all. Moved away from town with few possessions.
Leaving my life behind, starting over, made a HUGE difference. Now, I'm quite the happy, productive member of society.
Re:Not the Issue, Leaving the situation is! (Score:4, Interesting)
When a former convict goes back into the same community that he committed his crimes in, he's probably going to fall back into roughly the same life that he had before as that life was probably the path of least-resistance for that neighborhood. Put him into a different neighborhood and he has to learn a new way to live, and there's a greater chance over the previous one that it will not include crime. No guarantee, but it's probably better odds.
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It wasn't easy, and certainly not what I wanted to do. But I was watching my future crumble. Another issue I think that holds these people in the same community is family. Family didn't want me to go, but I couldn't stay. My dad could sense that it wasn't what I wanted... but it's what I had to do. Looking back, they were part of the problem.
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Re:Not the Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, American Justice is about keeping enough poor people incarcerated that revolution can be avoided.
The ridiculous percentage of Americans that are incarcerated has more to do with politics than it does crime.
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No, American Justice is about keeping enough poor people incarcerated that revolution can be avoided.
That is a load of SJW crap. The recent riots in America (Ferguson, Baltimore, etc.) have all occurred in neighborhoods with particularly high incarceration rates. Nobody believes that prisons have a calming influence.
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It's crime mixed with idiotic politics that come as a result of politicians trying to look tough on crime rather than determine how to solve the actual problem. The prison system doesn't help do much in the way of reforming anyone so a lot of people just go back to crime again. When you make a lot of victim-less activities illegal is it really any wonder that you end up with a lot of criminals.
Not really sure what locking up the nation's poor has to d
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That sounds like a really, really inane conspiracy.
It's not insane, it's evil. Big, big difference.
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American Justice is about having a penalty so severe that the risk/reward ratio makes doing the crime a bad idea. Unfortunately, many, many people today have a problem with thinking very far in the future.
About half the people in prison have serious mental health issues that prevent them understanding risk/reward. Many more have serious impulse control issues that make it not matter even if they do understand. Any justice system based on criminals making a rational assessment of risk and reward is not going to be very successful. Try having a conversation about "risk and reward" with an unmedicated schizophrenic, or try explaining to an alcoholic that having another drink is not a good idea.
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It that was true, how do you account for other countries with far less then half the number of criminals per citizen as usa?
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It that was true, how do you account for other countries with far less then half the number of criminals per citizen as usa?
Unlike America, they don't treat mental illness as a crime.
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Not seeking "justice" (Score:2)
American "justice" is more about getting revenge and punishing criminals Puritan style
Incarceration is an admission that the convicted person is a threat to society and needs to be removed. We don't know how to rehabilitate felons, but we do know how to lock them up so they can't hurt people, at least for a while.
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Is a pot smoker that much of a threat to society that they deserve locking up?
As for felons, the rest of the world solved that problem in the 19th and early 20th century by eliminating that class of person (excepting Nigeria). Only America practices segregation with ex-criminals by creating a whole new class of people without basic rights.
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American "justice" is more about getting revenge and punishing criminals Puritan style
Incarceration is an admission that the convicted person is a threat to society and needs to be removed. We don't know how to rehabilitate felons, but we do know how to lock them up so they can't hurt people, at least for a while.
Maybe that should be "We don't know, and we are not particularly interested in finding out" - there are lots of examples of things that are more effective at rehabilitation both within and without the USA borders. We just do not have great enough interest in implementing any of them, and there are enough individuals and groups with incentives to keep the system as-is that it is challenging to build any such interest.
Universal health care can help as well (Score:2)
As some people use the jail / prison system as there doctor and if the ACA goes away that may go up.
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Bonus points when you execute the wrong person and the real murderer murders someone else so you can once again execute another wrong person. Rinse and repeat and you can kill a lot of people while feeling mortally superiour for legally murdering people. If you're really lucky society will tilt into full scale authoritarianism and you can kill people based on colour, race, religion or lots of other reasons and as it's all legal, you are still a law obeying upstanding citizen.
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Probably True (Score:5, Informative)
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To be far, the bulk of the provincial volume is Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles.
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Recidivism rates for those sentenced to provincial jails is roughly 45% re-offend
Well, we know which group Rickey and Julien fall into.
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Provincial inmates are released to the community they came from, while Federal inmates are paroled to a different community.
That seems like common sense. You and your pals take up a life of crime. You get released back into the same neighborhood where all your pals still live/are released to. It's likely you'll fall into the same bad company. Get put into a community where your pals aren't ready to help you re-offend and you're less likely to re-offend.
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If you help them find work and housing in a new community, they don't want to go back to where they came from.
Do pigs make sties, or do sties make pigs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Crim Def Atty here (Score:4, Insightful)
The number one factor I've seen in recidivism is that after they offend, they continue to have the same friends as before and most of their friends are scumbags who either enable or encourage bad behavior. This is why the frequent fliers have such a difficult time getting through probation without violating. All the good intentions in the world don't matter if you spend your days hanging out with friends who are always getting high or hanging out at clubs where people get into fights. It only shows up as a geographical correlation in this study because criminals tend to be concentrated in certain neighborhoods regardless of whether they're incarcerated or not.
The little old lady who gets tipsy one day and slugs a cop if a very different probationer than the guy who slugs a cop because the cop is breaking up a fight between his buddies and a rival gang. The little old lady will go back to not engaging in criminal activity. She might moderate her alcohol intake better in the future. The ganger will go back to doing gang shit, which consists mostly of activities that will violate ones probation.
Criminals don't get back to prison through some mysterious osmosis process, they reoffend because it's hard to break bad habits, especially when your life is a giant maze of bad habits and people encouraging you to engage in them.
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Thanks for posting that.
"Bad company corrupts good character" (Score:5, Insightful)
People are social animals and they are generally aiming to fit in with some social group or other. Going from a drug/petty crime tolerant lifestyle to a clean start often requires changing your circle of friends. I have a friend who did this and completely turned his life around. Just to clarify, I'm one of his new friends, not his old ones.
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This makes complete sense.
I also wonder if gang affiliation in prison has a lot to do with it. I don't claim to be an expert, but from what I've read it's difficult to survive in a lot of prisons without some kind of gang affiliation. Even if you're not a full-on blood-in member, a lot of time people end up owing favors to whatever gang they were involved in and they're expected to pay those back and most prison gangs easily can reach out beyond the walls and coerce poeple back into criminal behavior.
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Please be my new friend. ;)
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Peer pressure (Score:2)
Won't Someone Please Think of the ... (Score:2)
Within 3 years is BS (Score:2)
I'd like to see the stats for how many get sent back once they're off parole, and possibly correlate those to how many got send back for BS parole violations.
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I'd like to see the stats for how many get sent back once they're off parole, and possibly correlate those to how many got send back for BS parole violations.
Those might be useful stats. What would constitute a "BS parole violation"? I do not doubt that parole restrictions can be strict, but aren't they better than the alternative of being in jail?
""who moved away" (Score:2)
convicts who moved away from their old neighborhood when released from prison had a much smaller recidivism rate.
No kidding. Convicts who decided to change their life - changed their life. Those who went right back to their old neighborhood and fellow ex-cons went right back to their old life. Who woulda thunk it?.
What about the police? (Score:2)
So pretty much like your mom said.... (Score:3)
...it's that bad group of friends that will get you into trouble.
Respect (Score:2)
Not surprising... (Score:2)
This shows the same outcome about addiction --where did the person move to after rehabilitation?
"In the 1970s, a sizable number of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam self-identified as heroin addicts. But when they returned stateside, the number of these soldiers who continued their addiction was surprisingly low. Why? Turns out a massive disruption in their environment and routine played a big role in helping them change their behavior."
In essence, those that got rehab in Vietnam weren't craving it when they got
Obligatory (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:So the people you are around (Score:5, Funny)
really do make a difference..
Yes, they do.
Move the ex-cons into my neighborhood, full of investment bankers and corporate executives. And they'll learn how not to get caught.
Re: (Score:2)
You got it wrong -- bankers and CEOs still get caught. But their punishment is tons of bailout money and a golden parachute.
Re: (Score:2)
Based on your lack of empathy and desire to see innocent people suffer to protect you, I project you as having a 50% chance of committing a crime in the future. I therefore propose locking you up for life in prison right now so you won't have the chance.