People released from New Jersey prisons in recent years are committing fewer new crimes than they did a decade ago, state corrections officials announced this week in a new report on recidivism.
The department tracked the 4,174 people freed from state custody in 2021 and found that 6% of men and 2% of women returned to prison within three years for convictions for new offenses.
That’s a 50% drop from 2013, when 12% of men and 4% of women were reincarcerated for committing new crimes within three years of their release, according to the report. The state’s prison population has fallen over that time, with about 13,000 people now in state prisons compared to about 23,000 in 2013.
Those numbers don’t show the full picture of recidivism, though, because parole violations balloon recidivism rates.
People who break the conditions of parole — such as by failing drug tests, violating curfew, or skipping mandatory check-ins with parole officers — are considered recidivists too. About 700 of the 1,059 people who recidivated after leaving prison in 2021 were technical parole violators, meaning they got in trouble for flouting parole restrictions rather than committing new crimes, officials wrote.
Factoring them in, 45% of people released from state prisons in 2021 were rearrested, 29% were reconvicted, and 25% were reincarcerated, the report’s researchers found. In comparison, 31% of those released from prison a decade ago were reimprisoned.
Former Gov. Phil Murphy tried during his final year in office last year to change the state’s costly practice of reincarcerating technical parole violators but failed.
Corrections officials also found that more than half of those released in 2021 who recidivated within three years did so in the first year after their release. People who participated in work-release programs had the lowest recidivism rates, officials wrote.
Victoria Kuhn, the department’s commissioner, credited prison reentry programs and educational, vocational, mental health, addiction, and social services with reducing recidivism rates.
“Public safety is most effectively strengthened when rehabilitation is at the heart of our mission,” she said in a statement.
Still, the report suggests policymakers should tweak rehabilitation and reentry services to further cut recidivism rates.
Parole and probation violations are a “significant contributing factor to recidivism” and reincarceration, the report says.
“This underscores the importance of tailoring rehabilitation programs, support services, and reentry strategies to address the specific needs and circumstances of different gender groups who are under supervision at release,” the report says.
There is “room for further improvement,” especially, in services meant to smooth the transition back into the community during the first few months to a year after someone leaves prison, officials wrote.
“The transition from the highly structured environment of prison to the freedom of society can be overwhelming, leading some individuals to revert to criminal behavior or violate the conditions of their parole,” they wrote.
The department is required by state law to report annually on recidivism rates. Wednesday’s report was the 15th it has issued since the law passed in 2009.
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