Comprehensive Recidivism Study: Massachusetts Sentencing Commission

• NCJ Number: 202839
• Date Published: June 2002
• Length: 85 pages
• Corporate Author: Massachusetts Sentencing Cmssn
• Sale Source: Massachusetts Sentencing Cmssn
• Publication Format: Document (Online)
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Report to the Massachusetts House Committee on Ways and Means, Senate Committee on Ways and Means, Joint Committee on Criminal Justice, and the Joint Committee on Public Safety; downloaded November 10, 2003.

Annotation

This Massachusetts recidivism study reports on a 1-year follow-up of a sample of 3,751 offenders who were under the supervision of drug courts, community corrections centers, houses of correction, the Department of Correction, and the Parole Board.

Abstract

For offenders released from incarceration, a "recidivist" was defined as an offender with a new arrest (arraignment) in the year following release from a correctional facility, or an offender with a technical violation of probation or parole that resulted in incarceration within the year following release from a correctional facility. For offenders in community corrections centers or drug court programs, a "recidivist" was defined as an offender with a new arrest (arraignment) in the year following the date of entry into a community corrections center or drug court program, or an offender with a technical violation of probation or parole that resulted in incarceration in the year following the date of entry into a community corrections center or drug court program. Of the total sample (n=3,751), 1,841 (49.1 percent) met the definition of a recidivist. An estimated 44.5 percent of the total sample had one or more new arrests during the follow-up period. The proportion of offenders with one or more new arrests was lower for the community-based program; 38.2 percent of the drug court participants had one or more new arrests, and 39.3 percent of the community-corrections-center participants had one or more new arrests. Of the offenders released after serving a house of correction sentence, 49.8 percent of those discharged had one or more new arrests compared to 38.5 percent released by parole. This report also provides information on the nature of the recidivism behavior and explores the relationship between recidivism rates and program involvement, current offense, criminal history, and demographic characteristics. Suggestions for future research would build on the model used in this study but would address some of the limitations of the current analysis, i.e., scope of the sample, length of the follow-up period, and limited program information. 23 tables, 1 figure, and appended methodology description and data on house of correction sentenced offenders