1109 Recidivism – We Can Do Better
There are currently about two million men and women inU.S.prisons. According to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) study in 2008, 95% of that population will be released back into society at one point or another. Each year over 650,000 offenders are released and there are a little under five million ex-offenders under some type of community supervision. None of these numbers include persons who served their full sentence and were directly released without supervision. The CRS study noted that unsupervised releases accounted for up to another 20% of ex-offenders.
Of course releasing prisoners is only part of the story. The same CRS study revealed that by the end of a three year period, over two thirds of released prisoners had been rearrested, about half of them for new crimes and the rest because of “technical” violations of their paroles. The sad part of these statistics is that, to a point, the longer parolees are out, the higher the chance of their failure.
Failures are not isolated to the ex-offenders alone. Besides the obvious possibility of new victims, there is collateral damage as well including, in many cases, the parolees themselves and their families. Studies have verified what should be intuitive, that any ex-offender’s inability to re-integrate into society in a positive meaningful way does harm. Studies indicate that the process of incarceration, failed re-entry and re-incarceration creates emotional and behavioral problems within offender families. The process also tends to destabilize social ties and can have repercussions on entire neighborhoods. As a 1991 study verified, in some neighborhoods children “…are more likely to know someone involved in the criminal justice system than to know someone who is employed in a profession such as law or medicine.”
Something is clearly wrong with the status quo and there are plenty of targets to blame, the most common ones being ex-offenders themselves. It is easy to assume that parolees are just bad people. Make no mistake, there are truly bad people who stay bad. The heinous nature of their crime should prevent them from ever being foisted upon society a second time. For some re-offenders that may be true, but only for the minority.
The rest of the story is not so simple. In many cases, newly released prisoners, whether supervised or unsupervised, face daunting challenges. Besides food, shelter, clothing and transportation expenses, there are fines, court costs and restitution expenses. Healthy relationships suffer, if they continue at all. For many, depending on their circumstances and including those close to them, the sense of failure, purposelessness and social stigma can be overwhelming.
As a society, we can do better. Every indication points to the need for comprehensive rehabilitative interventions which include life skills training, counseling, substance abuse treatments, social connections and more. Interventions must begin at the time of incarceration and continue through the completion of parole. At the same time, justice must not be cheated. Appropriate punishment and restitution are musts.
Ultimately, offender re-entry is not successful until there is peace between perpetrator, victims and society. Without that peace, collateral destruction from crime will continue to grow. There is, therefore, one more set of processes needed – repentance, forgiveness, healing and restoration. Once these processes happen personally and genuinely for the offenders, they need to happen between perpetrator, victims and society. Only a restorative justice system and a restorative mindset in society will meet all the needs. The cycle will not be broken until eligible ex-offenders are welcomed as fully forgiven participants in society.