RECIDIVISM RATES SMOKE AND MIRRORS

For the statistics to be true, New York cops would have to be doing nothing but writing traffic tickets and cooping on the job


Mark Twain popularized a phrase often attributed to Benjamin Disraeli - "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

‘How To Stop Urban Crime Without Jail Time,’ an article by Franklin E. Zimring that was published in the January 28 issue of The Wall Street Journal, sang the praises of the New York Police Department’s success in reducing the city’s crime and recidivism rates. In that article, one paragraph in particular caught my eye:

__“Another welcome finding from New York is that the new policing strategy has discouraged repeat offenders. In 1990, among all the prisoners from New York City released from state prison, a full 28% were convicted of another felony within three years. But as the general crime rate went down, so did the crime rate of released offenders. By 2006, their three-year reconviction rate had dropped to 10%.”

Eli B. Silverman, Professor Emeritus, John Jay College and John A. Eterno, Associate Dean of Criminal Justice, Molloy College, have authored several articles accusing the New York Police Department of manipulating the city’s crime stattistics. Their new book, ‘The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation,’ is just out. Silverman and Eterno have been battered by a barrage of criticism from city officials and NYPD’s hierarchy, who do not take kindly to anyone questioning their bogus crime statistics.

While I am convinced that police departments and cities throughout the U.S. manipulate their crime statistics - Houston classified several murders as suicides - in order to make themselves look good, I cannot speak with authority on the manipulation of NYPD crime statistics that professors Silverman and Eterno have been researching and writing about. But as a former California state parole agent and criminal justice educator, I am quite familiar with the recidivism problem among ex-convicts.

I don't for one minute believe those statistics in the paragraph that caught my eye. For as many years as I can remember, parole recidivism rates have held about the same across the country - a 40-50 percent rate within three years of release from prison, and even higher for drug users. A 28 percent rate seems incredulous, but a 10 percent rate has got to be pure fantasy!

There are two ways that parolees are returned to prison. They can be returned for violating the conditions of parole or they are returned on a new beef.

When I was a parole agent, the California parole board required proof of at least two violations before they would consider returning a parolee to prison. I knew a number of parole agents who recommended a return to prison just so they could get rid of ‘nuisance cases’ – parolees who were a pain in the ass to the agent. You could always find a number of insignificant conditions that parolees violated. I would never stoop to that because I felt the nuisance cases came with the territory. But with a serious violation (not necessarily a new crime) or with repetitive violations, I did not hesitate to recommend a return to prison.

When a parolee repeatedly violates his conditions of parole, he needs to be returned to prison because his behavior is a precursor to committing new crimes - that is if he hasn’t already been committing crimes for which he just hasn’t been caught yet. Unfortunately, today in California and probably other states as well, parolees are not returned to prison for parole violations because of prison overcrowding and budget shortfalls. And that is putting the public’s safety at great risk.

As for new beefs, all one has to do is read the papers or watch the news on TV to see a steady stream of parolees arrested for committing serious crimes and those arrests are made on a daily basis.

Which brings me back to those incredulous New York statistics. With a recidivism rate of 28 percent, I would have to say that parole officers are simply not doing their jobs, or are not allowed to return parole violators to prison, and the police are doing a piss poor job of catching crooks. And for a 10 percent recidivism rate to be true, New York cops would have to be doing nothing but writing traffic tickets and cooping on the job.

I say no more smoke and mirrors with those recidivism rate statistics. I am sure that the true recidivism rate still hovers around 40-50 percent in New York, California, Texas or wherever.