Do Prisons Reform?

For John, BLUF:  We need to study, and talk about, prison, probation and how prison works.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Prisoner escapes, kills family of five — showing criminals often don’t age out of crime

From Liberty Unyielding, by Lawyer Hans Bader, 9 June 2022.

Here is the lede:

Convicted murderer Gonzalo Lopez escaped a prison bus in Texas and then killed a family of five, including four children.  His escape last month triggered a huge manhunt, with hundreds of police officers scouring the woods where he had hidden.  Yet he managed to kill a family in Texas’s Leon County last week.  Later, he was killed in a shootout with police.

A key question in prison reform is if Mr Gonzalo Lopez is unusual.

The article, towards the end, says:

But experts say that inmates often do not age out of crime, even when they reach their 50s or 60s.  This February, the U.S. Sentencing Commission issued a 116-page report titled “Recidivism of Federal Violent Offenders Released in 2010.”  Over an eight-year period, violent offenders returned to crime at a 63.8% rate.  The median time to rearrest was 16 months for these violent offenders.  So, most violent offenders released from prison committed more crimes.  Even among those offenders over age 60, 25.1% of violent offenders were rearrested.

So, is locking people up something that allows them to reform themselves, or is it a period to hone skills?  Further, given that some 35% of prisions don't return to a life of crime, can we identify those individuals and within a reasonable length of time return them to society, focusing our penal resourses on the real social misfits?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff