“The continuing improvement in the state’s recidivism rate is encouraging news for all Californians,” CDCR Secretary Jeff Beard said. “When former offenders are leading productive, law abiding lives, our communities are safer. As we move forward and both CDCR and counties utilize state funds to invest more in evidence-based rehabilitation efforts, I’m confident we will see recidivism rates continue to decline.”
CDCR measures recidivism by arrests, convictions and returns to prison and uses the latter measure – returns to prison – as its primary measure of recidivism. CDCR’s return-to-prison measure includes offenders released from prison after having served their sentence for a crime as well as offenders released from prison after having served their term for a parole violation. All felons are tracked for the full three-year follow-up period, regardless of their status on parole or if they have discharged.
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Assembly Bill 109, the California Public Safety Realignment Act, became law on October 1, 2011. The law changed where people convicted of non-violent, non-serious and non-sex offenses serve their sentences. CDCR researchers expect that Realignment will have an impact on recidivism, but the impact is not significant in this report because it focuses on offenders released before Realignment’s implementation.
CDCR researchers did recently release a report that tracked inmates released from prison pre- and post-Realignment. It can be found at cdcr.ca.gov.
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Full story by CDCR at http://cdcrtoday.blogspot.com/2014/01/new-report-shows-californias-recidivism.html.