Recidivism

Research History and Modern Relevance

The concept of recidivism as applied to criminology began in the late nineteenth century, at the beginning of the modern era of sociology. By the early twentieth century, criminologists were proposing general theories about what causes crime and causes it to persist, and the concept had achieved general enough use in crime and law enforcement discussions that the derivative term recidivist was in use. In 1928, Illinois developed an assessment instrument for predicting future crime to determine parole eligibility for inmates. The introduction of formal risk assessment protocols permanently integrated recidivism prediction into correctional sentencing. Risk assessment quickly proliferated through corrections agencies and so pervades the criminal justice system that now, as crime commands media headlines, the popular press uses “recidivism” without the need to define it.

Initial studies of recidivism analyzed characteristics of known offenders. For example, the seminal work by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck studying former Massachusetts inmates yielded several publications over decades, reporting on imprisonment's effect on recidivism and, in later work, on predicting crime in juveniles. But working from known offender groups is inadequate for understanding what causes crime to occur and persist in wider populations.

An alternative approach to collecting recidivism data is to research subjects yet to commit crime. For example, Marvin Wolfgang and others studied entire groups of boys born in Philadelphia in 1945 and in 1958. This work demonstrated that, although the prevalence and incidence of offending changed over time, a minority of youths get arrested, a large percentage of that minority reoffend a few times, and a small percentage reoffend often and with more serious offenses. This groundbreaking study also reported factors related to recidivism and found that the severity of sanctions these serious offenders received did not reduce their reoffending.

By the 1970s, many correctional programs existed aiming to reduce recidivism, and this goal was entrenched in the justice system. Yet a survey in 1975 of the best 231 evaluations of correctional programs found no appreciable effect on recidivism from rehabilitative treatments. Through the 1970s and 1980s, practical applications of recidivism research examined career criminals as a subset of entire offender populations. These studies occurred in the policy context of pressure on criminal justice budgets and the need to allocate limited resources effectively. Successful recidivism prediction could help reserve prison space for the worst recidivists and focus prison alternatives on those less likely to recidivate.

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