A study suggests links between imprisonment and the likelihood of future incarceration. High rates of return to prison by previously incarcerated individuals contributed substantially to the large rise in incarceration rates in the United States between the 1970s and the late 2000s. To uncover the causes of the high return rates, David Harding and colleagues analyzed data on more than 100,000 people sentenced for felonies in the state of Michigan between 2003 and 2006. The authors found that for both white and nonwhite individuals who received a prison sentence, the probability of being admitted to prison within 5 years of release was around 20 percentage points greater than for individuals who received a probation sentence. This effect was largely driven by imprisonment for technical violations of community supervision: individuals sentenced to prison were significantly more likely to be imprisoned for parole violations than individuals sentenced to probation were to be imprisoned for probation violations. Sentence type had no significant effect on the likelihood of subsequent conviction for a new felony, suggesting that imprisonment has little effect on criminal behavior. The results suggest that intense parole supervision, which increases detection and punishment of low-level offenses or violations, might contribute to increased incarceration rates among parolees.
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Article #17-01544: "Short- and long-term effects of imprisonment on future felony convictions and prison admissions," by David J. Harding, Jeffrey Morenoff, Anh Nguyen, and Shawn Bushway.
MEDIA CONTACT: David J. Harding, University of California, Berkeley, CA; tel: 734-355-1165; e-mail: <dharding@berkeley.edu>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences