A systematic review of criminal recidivism rates worldwide: 3-year update

Abstract

Background: Comparing recidivism rates between countries may provide useful information about the relative effectiveness of different criminal justice policies. A previous 2015 review identified criminal recidivism data for 18 countries and found little consistency in outcome definitions and time periods. We aimed to update recidivism rates in prisoners internationally. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of criminal recidivism rates in prisoners and followed PRISMA guidelines. Using three bibliographic indexes, we carried out non-country-specific and targeted searches for 50 countries with the largest total prison populations. We included reports and studies of released prisoners that reported re-arrest, reconviction and reincarceration rates. Meta-analysis was not possible due to multiple sources of heterogeneity. Results: We identified criminal recidivism information for 23 countries. Of the 50 countries with the largest prison populations, 10 reported recidivism rates for prisoners. The most commonly reported outcome was the 2-year reconviction rate. We were able to examine recidivism over different time periods for 11 countries and found that most reported small changes in official recidivism rates. Overall, for 2-year follow-up period, reported re-arrest rates were between 26% and 60%, reconviction rates ranged from 20% to 63%, and reimprisonment rates varied from 14 to 45%. Conclusions: Although some countries made efforts to improve reporting, recidivism rates are not comparable between countries. Criminal justice agencies should consider using reporting guidelines described here to update their data.

A Second-Order Adaptive Social-Cognitive Agent Model for Prisoner Recidivism

“…In order to achieve these outcomes, which almost perfectly match the recidivism rates found by Yukhnenko et al [9], some model parameters have been tuned automatically. Through Simulated Annealinga well-known optimization technique that is effective in finding good parameter values for models with a large numbers of parameters [19] all connection weights to recidivism risk (S 16 ) were tuned by using the empirical data in [9]. These weights include…”

“…For example, prisoners are not locked up between bars, kitchens are fully equipped with sharp objects, and prison guards are more concerned with the prisoners. Although it may be against a more revenge-oriented sense of justice to treat criminals well, the recidivism rate has shown an impressive decrease since this change in the prison system and is with 20% now one of the lowest of the world [9]. In contrast to Norway, the recidivism rates are very high for the USA: 60% of the released prisoners is reconvicted within two years [9].…”

“…Although it may be against a more revenge-oriented sense of justice to treat criminals well, the recidivism rate has shown an impressive decrease since this change in the prison system and is with 20% now one of the lowest of the world [9]. In contrast to Norway, the recidivism rates are very high for the USA: 60% of the released prisoners is reconvicted within two years [9]. These high recidivism rates suggest that many American offenders are not moved by imprisonment to stay out of trouble [4].…”

A systematic review of criminal recidivism rates worldwide: 3-year update

“…A completed PRISMA checklist is available on OSF. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7SZJC ( Yukhnenko et al ., 2019b)…”

Strategies to maximise study retention and limit attrition bias in a prospective cohort study of men reporting a history of injecting drug use released from prison: The Prison and Transition Health study

“…There has been a 20% rise in the global prison population since the year 2000, with more than 11 million people in prison worldwide on any given day. 1 Research has highlighted the disproportionate health, social, and economic disadvantage experienced by people in prison, including adverse childhood experiences, [2][3][4] low educational attainment, 5 high rates of unemployment and homelessness, 6, 7 poor physical and mental health, [8][9][10][11] substance use, dependence, and associated morbidities, 12,13 high rates of reimprisonment, 14 and premature death. 15 Despite these outcomes being particularly acute for people in custodial settings with histories of injecting drug use (IDU), including two-year reimprisonment rates that exceed 80%, 16 little is known about the post-release experiences of this population.…”