Recidivism Quotes

“Yet our ability to exercise free will and transcend the most extraordinary obstacles does not make the conditions of our life irrelevant. Most of us struggle and often fail to meet the biggest challenges of our lives. Even the smaller challenges—breaking a bad habit or sticking to a diet—often prove too difficult, even for those of us who are relatively privileged and comfortable in our daily lives. In fact, what is most remarkable about the hundreds of thousands of people who return from prison to their communities each year is not how many fail, but how many somehow manage to survive and stay out of prison against all odds.”
― Michelle Alexander

“We care (about prison education), very simply, because (prisoners) get out. Almost everyone who is locked up now is going to be set free one day. If we treat prisoners like animals the whole time they are locked up, that's what we'll get when they're back on the streets: wild, dangerous animals.”
― Christopher Zoukis, College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons

“Proshka was a man of self-esteem. He considered himself a cut above the rest, and had a degree of personal pride. His spell in prison was a humiliating experience for him. No longer could he strut with pride before his fellows, and his spirits sank at once.
Proshka went home from prison embittered not so much against Pyotr Nikolayevich as against the whole world.
Everyone said the same thing: after he came out of prison, Proshka went to pieces. He grew too lazy to work, took to drink, and was soon caught stealing clothes from the trademan's wife. Once again he ended up in prison.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Forged Coupon

“All the studies and all the research in the field of criminology affirm that prison education is the least expensive and most effective solution to overcrowding and strain on the budget caused by recevidism.”
― Christopher Zoukis, College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons

“Providing post-secondary and academic education to only 10 to 30 per cent of our prison population can translate to more than $60 billion a year added to state and national coffers.”
― Christopher Zoukis, College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons

“Forms of punishment that do not include the human reckoning of accountability and the human grappling of remorse rely exclusively on extrinsic motivation— a threat from outside. One of the effects of accountability is to help foster people’s intrinsic motivation, which manifests in part as remorse.”
― Danielle Sered, Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair

“My reasons for arguing that resources should be disproportionately devoted to those at greater risk are rooted in criminal justice literature. Though counterintuitive, the evidence is clear: when low-risk inmates receive treatment in prisons, or in the community, their recidivism actually goes up. Lower-risk inmates are not “broken” to begin with, but putting them in treatment they do not need tells them they are broken, makes them angry, and mixes them with higher-risk inmates who are broken and who negatively influence other people.

In one study, high-risk offenders averaged a 92 percent recidivism rate under minimal treatment conditions, but their rate dropped to 25 percent under intensive treatment conditions. The lower-risk offenders, on the other hand, averaged 12 percent recidivism under minimal treatment conditions, but their rate increased to 29 percent under intensive treatment conditions (Andrews & Friesen, 1987). Many meta-analyses have confirmed this counterintuitive pattern of higher-level offenders getting better with the right kind of treatment and lower-level offenders actually getting worse (Andrews, et al., 1990).

By putting lower-risk people in prison we also take them away from all the things that make them low risk—supportive wives and children, meaningful jobs, pro-social friends, etc. Higher-risk inmates are broken and when they receive the right treatment their recidivism goes down. This is called the “risk principle.” It tells prison administrators who they should focus their scarce treatment resources on—the higher-risk inmates. The “need principle” tells administrators what they need to focus on once they know who requires the most help.

Many need areas such as mental health, poverty, and self-esteem are not predictive of crime. Most people who are poor and have low self-esteem, and most people who are suffering from clinical depression, do not commit crimes. Other need areas, known as “criminogenic need,” are highly predictive of crime. For example, individuals who have antisocial attitudes, values, and beliefs, antisocial friends, antisocial personalities (traits of impulsivity, low self-control, and narcissism), or substance abuse problems, are highly likely to commit crime and need help with these areas of their life. The risk and the need principles are just two of several, counterintuitive principles of effective correctional programming (Andrews, et al., 1990; Bogue, Diebel, & O’Connor, 2008; Bonta & Andrews, 2010; McNeil, Raynor, & Trotter, 2010).”
― Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists