1. Recidivism - Institutionalization
HEALING ARCHITECTURE
Recidivism refers to the act of a person repeating an undesirable, usually forbidden by the rest of society, action/behavior, after he/she has either experienced negative AN c o n s e ALTERNATIVE quences for this particuPROGRAM lar action/ behavior or has been treated to eliminate it. In conjuction with criminal behavior, it practically means the frequency with which people are detected or apprehended committing additional crimes after being released from prison for similar ones. It is a fact that the use of prisons to control crime has increased in frequency in the last decade. Most recently, mandatory minimum sentencing policies have gained widespread popularity -especially throughout USA- severely limiting judicial discretion in sentencing. The principle reason for mandatory minimums is the false belief that the length of time in prison acts as a deterrent to future recidivism. However, numerous reports attribute lower recidivism rates in cases where there is a focus on rehabilitation and education of prisoners compared with the cases where punishment, deterrence and keeping potentially dangerous individuals away from society is prevalent. Moreover, they indicate that prison produced slight increases in recidivism while there was some tendency for lower risk offenders to be more negatively affected by the prison experience, thus increasing the likelihood of future delinquencies.
{ inm at e s le ss e d u c a t e d t h a n g e n er a l p u b l i c }
{ e f f e ct ive pro g r a m s a t r e du c i n g r e c i d i v i s m }
{ p e rce n t a ge o f r e l ea s e d p r i s o n e r s r ea r r e s t e d i n 3 y e a r s }
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