Recidivism and Criminal Specialization

It is widely known that many offenders find themselves in trouble with the law again within a few years of their release from prison, but do the recidivism data reflect specialization among criminals? The question has implications for sentencing, among other things. Judges appropriately take risk of reoffense into account when setting prison terms, but, in assessing these risks, it is important to know not only whether a defendant is likely to commit another crime, but also what crimes the defendant is most likely to commit. We may want to keep our likely future murderers and rapists behind bars as long as possible, but we probably feel quite differently about potential future shoplifters and disorderly drunks.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics is an excellent resource for national recidivism trends. As discussed in this earlier post, the BJS’s most recent major report in this area appeared in 2014. Last week, the BJS issued supplemental tables that speak to the specialization question.

In brief, the evidence points to a modest degree of specialization, varying considerably by offense type.

Consider sexual assault, for instance. 

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Our December Bloggers Are Here

Please join me in welcoming our two guest bloggers for the month of December.

Our Alumni Blogger for December is Christopher “Chal” Little.  After graduating cum laude from Marquette University Law School, Chal joined Meissner Tierney Fischer & Nichols as an Associate this year.  At Marquette he served as an Academic Success Program Leader, participated in the American Association for Justice 2016 Student Trial Advocacy Competition, was a member of the Moot Court Executive Board, the Business Law Association, and was the Marquette University Law School Student Liaison to the Wisconsin Bar Association Appellate Practice Section.  While in law school, Chal also served as a Summer Honors Intern at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C..

Our Student Blogger for the month of December is Anjali Sharma.  Anjali is currently 2L who is interested in Patent Law as well as Transactional Law. She is on the board of the Intellectual Property Society, and serves as a member of the Intellectual Property Law Review. She graduated from the University of North Dakota prior to coming to Marquette Law School.

We look forward to your posts!

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Two Views, One Conversation: Light Shed on School Vouchers at Law School Program

Even in a social media world, I’m still a big backer of the notion that serious, informative, in-person dialogue about major public issues is a good thing. The more contentious and important the subject and the more level-headed the discussion, the better. When it comes to contentiousness and importance, almost nothing in the realm of education policy rivals the subject of private school vouchers for kindergartner through twelfth grade students. Milwaukee was the place where vouchers for low-income, urban students were launched in1990. And, with the election of Donald Trump as president and Trump’s selection of voucher-advocate Betsy DeVos to be secretary of education, vouchers are a hot subject.

All of this is to say that I thought the hour-long session at Marquette Law School on Wednesday was worth listening to, and the opportunity to do that remains, as you can find at the end of this blog item. In a program titled Lessons from a Quarter Century of School Vouchers: One Conversation, Two Points of View, we brought together Scott Jensen, a key figure in the voucher movement in Wisconsin and now an adviser to the American Federation for Children, a school-choice advocacy group headed by DeVos, and Julie Underwood, a professor in the education and law schools at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a long-time advocate for public schools.

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