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| Catch a cold, go to prison: The recidivism debate |
| By latimes.com |
| Published: 11/28/2013 |
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One bit of popular lore that Californians often hear regarding our criminal justice system is that the state has an extraordinarily high rate of recidivism — the nation's highest, at somewhere between 65% and 75%. That figure is cited in legislative hearings, community meetings and news conferences, and in fact was repeated last week by Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris as she unveiled a new division in her office to deal with the problem. Harris, understandably, was using the figures and the jargony word "recidivism" as rhetorical shorthand; she noted that the state's 58 counties have a hard time comparing data and learning from one another's successes and failures, and she said her office would now provide some needed uniformity and a platform for sharing data. But any attempt to drive down the rate at which former offenders get back into trouble has to steer clear of that kind of shorthand. Criminal justice officials from the attorney general to judges, prosecutors to police would be wise to come up with an entirely new lexicon to describe just what it is they are trying to track and correct. That's because "recidivism" has so many different meanings that, without meticulous explanation, it has no meaning at all, leading people to bandy about numbers and concepts that are misleading or downright false, and to create programs that cost money but don't necessarily solve any problems — or, at least, that fail to solve the problems they purport to address. Clearer language is needed to produce clearer results. Read More. |
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