The percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested and returned to prison.
Relevant to: tax dollars, state budget, economy, productivity, equity, community.
NUMBERS CA Recidivism Rate/Prison Population Growth
1980 Prison Population: 24,569
2009 Prison Population: 167,922 [that's 0.5% of our population]
Yes, the general population of CA did grow during those years, but no, it did not increase 583%, not that much.
2009 CDCR Budget: $9.8 billion [$9.1 bill proposed for the coming year]
Avg annual cost/prisoner: $49,000
These people could be paying taxes instead of taking them! How?
CA recidivism: 66% [two out of three will return]
National recidivism: 40%
The reduction of recidivism has potential for increasing state productivity and saving CA money via methods of employment and education since reasons for recidivism are so closely linked to very low education levels and very few employment opportunities post-release. It's a cycle. The Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice has released a report on increasing employment opportunities for people with prior convictions to slow that cycle. If the budget for the "corrections" system could be allocated to actually make corrections, to form productive, contributing members of society, we might have more money to spend on programs that help all of us and prevent said cycle from even starting.
That's not to say that prisoners should take no blame for their actions as individuals. I mean to say that I think criminal behavior can additionally be seen as a side effect and indicator of broken social systems that are set up by public policies and social norms that need to evolve to better suit changing conditions for the sake of the rest of society. The correlations of arbitrary characteristics [such as race, income level, and education level] to imprisonment is just too strong to say that all criminal behavior is 100% an individual choice.
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