Two-thirds of male convicts and more than half of women released from Montgomery County jails will be rearrested and charged with a new crime within three years after being released, according to a new study.
About 17 percent of the men and 12 percent of women rearrested were charged with a serious crime, the study shows.
Sex
rearrested within 3 years
re-conviction rate
Men
66 percent
48 percent
Women
54 percent
35 percent
Source: County study
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Art Wallenstein said he was not surprised by the county’s recidivism rate, as it mirrors previous nationwide findings.
He added that the purpose of the study, which he called the first of its kind of a county prison population, was to get a basic idea of what has been happening to prisoners once they’ve left county jails.
“It’s very much the first step,” Wallenstein said.
The study also found that younger, nonwhite convicts were more likely to be repeat offenders.
Craig Uchida, president of Justice & Security Strategies and project manager of the study, said the study’s usefulness lay in identifying the percentage of ex-convicts who commited serious crimes, so that the cash-strapped county knew where to devote scarce resources for further study and attention.
“Those are the people … that are probably going to do more harm to community,” Uchida said. “The others are all misdemeanors. I mean, let’s face it, they’re all petty thieves, they’re all minor types of offenses.”
Both Uchida and Wallenstein emphasized that the study wasn’t designed to measure the effectiveness of the county’s efforts at rehabilitating its prisoners. Wallenstein noted that some subjects in the study may have spent as little as an hour in his department’s care.
The county’s corrections department has a budget of about $65 million a year, with less than 5 percent of that going toward rehabilitation programs, Wallenstein said.
Uchida praised the county’s willingness to look at recidivism numbers.
“No one does these studies,” he said. “It’s difficult … at local county levels, they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the time, and they don’t have the intellectual will to do it.”
The study was funded by the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention. Uchida said it cost $80,000 and took a year and a half.
