Good Question: How Often Do Former Prisoners Re-Offend?
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - For years, Minnesota has locked up sex offenders indefinitely after their prison time is complete. But, on Wednesday, a judge ruled that program unconstitutional. The main reason these sex offenders stay behind bars is because people are afraid if they get out, they might hurt someone again. The same could also be said for killers, robbers and drunk drivers.
So, how often do all prisoners reoffend? Good Question.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) conducted a five-year study of 404,639 prisoners from 30 states that was released in 2005. Within three years, 67.8 percent of them had been arrested again. By five years, that rate jumped to 76.6 percent.
"It's such an important figure, but it's really difficult to ascertain," said Brad Colbert, a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law. "You have to think about it in a couple of different ways. Are they likely to offend for the crime they're incarcerated for?"
He said some people are re-arrested for violating parole -- for offenses like missing a meeting with a parole officer or having an unauthorized alcoholic drink. According to the BJS, probation or parole violations happen about 25 percent of the time.
The BJS doesn't give statistics on whether prisoners re-offend with the same crime, but other research does.
Murderers, for example, have low recidivism rates when it comes to killing again. Journalist Nancy Mullane has studied recidivism rates of killers. She found that of the 988 people convicted of murder in California over a 20-year period, none were arrested for murder again.
"The people who repeat the most are property offenders," said Colbert.
Property offenses can include burglary, car theft or fraud. He said people in prison for DWIs and drug offenses are also more likely repeat their crimes.
But, when it comes to sex offenders, Colbert said there's a tendency to believe they are more likely to re-offend, but that's not the case.
"Yes, some sex offenders re-offend, that's absolutely true," he said. "But the numbers are much lower than you'd anticipate."
Two studies found 13 percent to 20 percent of child molesters were later convicted for another sexual offense. For rapists, the rates were between 19 percent and 23 percent.
And, according to a February 2015 WCCO investigation, of the 67 sex offenders in Wisconsin released over 16 years, five were convicted of another sex crime.
The Center for Sex Offender Management does point out that although the recidivism rates for sexual offenders are less than the general prison population, the numbers might be low given that only a fraction of sex crimes are reported to police.
"There are some people who get out and do awful things and part of our problem is identifying those people," Colbert said. "We haven't figured that out."
