We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
FUN WITH NUMBERS
While it awaits the approval of the slate of new members, the United States Sentencing Commission remains busy. With a staff of lawyers, actuaries and policy wonks, the USSC continues to crank out studies that provide some pretty useful data for those seeking to make a point with their sentencing judges.
This week, the USSC issued a seventh recidivism study, this one an examination of the relationship between the length of incarceration and recidivism. Two years ago, the USSC issued a report on federal offenders released in 2005, finding that people receiving sentences of more than 60 months were less likely to recidivate compared to people receiving shorter sentences.
The new study replicates the previous study, which in itself is useful as a check on the accuracy of the prior results. Focused on over 32,000 people released in 2010, the USSC studied whether incarceration has a deterrent effect, a criminogenic effect, or no effect at all.
A “criminogenic” effect would mean that incarceration is likely to cause recidivism rather than deter it.
The findings may seem self-evident to many, but in the real world, even Captain Obvious sometimes needs validation. The study found that people sentenced to less than 60 months were neither more nor less likely to be recidivists as a result of their incarceration. But folks sentenced to more than 60 months but less than 120 months were 18% less likely to commit a new offense after release than similar people receiving shorter sentences. For people who served more than 120 months, the likelihood of recidivism was even less, 29% lower compared to offenders receiving shorter sentences.
The National Institute for Justice has previously noted that “policymakers and practitioners believe that increasing the severity of the prison experience enhances the ‘chastening’ effect, thereby making individuals convicted of an offense less likely to commit crimes in the future.” Only nine years ago, criminologist Daniel S. Nagin wrote, “Scientists have found no evidence for the chastening effect… Studies show that for most individuals convicted of a crime, short to moderate prison sentences may be a deterrent but longer prison terms produce only a limited deterrent effect…”
The two USSC studies, however, suggest the opposite. To be sure, the difference in recidivism reduction begins to flatten – a 60-120 month sentence gets you an 18% reduction while 120-plus only adds 11 points more. Still, the gain from 18%to 29% could be convincing to a court deciding that someone – especially with a prior record – would benefit from over a decade on ice to cure him or her of criminal predispositions.
U.S. Sentencing Commission, Length of Incarceration And Recidivism (June 20, 2022)
Sentencing Law and Policy, US Sentencing Commission releases another report on “Length of Incarceration and Recidivism” (June 21, 2022)
National Institute for Justice, Five Things About Deterrence (June 5, 2016)
Nagin, Daniel S., Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century (Crime and Justice in America: 1975-2025), M. Tonry, ed, Chicago, Ilinois: University of Chicago Press (2013)
– Thomas L. Root