New Report on Recidivism

"In one of the most comprehensive reports of its kind, the Pew Center on the States found that slightly more than four in 10 offenders, nationwide, return to prison within three years after release, a collective rate that has remained largely unchanged in years, despite huge increases in prison spending that now costs states $52 billion annually.

" 'The system designed to deter (inmates) from continued criminal behavior clearly is falling short,' Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project study, an arm of the non-profit's public policy analysis group, was quoted by USAToday last Wednesday. " 'That is an unhappy reality, not just for offenders but for the safety of American communities.'"

Pew had asked states to report three-year return to-prison rates for all inmates released from their prison systems in 1999 and 2004. According to those survey results, "45.4 percent of people released from prison in 1999 and 43.3 percent of those sent home in 2004 were returned to prison within three years, either for committing a new crime or for violating conditions governing their release… revealing that recidivism rates have been largely stable.

Study results showed a nearly even split between states that had increasing and decreasing rates of recidivism between the 1999 and 2004 year groupings. Oregon, Kansas and Utah led the country in declining number of returns to prison during the study period, with Oregon reporting the steepest drop of 31.9 percent. South Dakota and Washington State reported increases of greater than 30 percent.

From a slightly different perspective, the Report showed Montana and Oregon documented the largest declines in “new crime returns” while North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon reported the largest decreases in returns for parole and other technical violations of supervised release.

Back in February, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Corrections (ODRC) announced its offender recidivism rate wass at an 11- year low, with only 34 percent of inmates returning to prison after release. In Ohio recidivism is calculated on a three year time period. The current rate ODRC reported is based on offenders released in 2007, during which time period, 7.29 percent of offenders returned to prison on a technical violation of supervision or a supervision sanction, and 26.73 percent being returned on a new felony commitment.