Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Readers sometimes ask me about the rates of recidivism. Rates are misleading, depending on how we measure recidivism. When we measure recidivism, we must consider the following factors:

• length of time since release,
• whether an individual is incarcerated for committing a new crime, or
• whether an individual is incarcerated for committing a technical violation of supervised release.

In the state of California, if we measure recidivism by rates of a return to custody for any reason within three years of release, the recidivism rate exceeds 70 percent. Rates would be lower if we considered a shorter time frame. Another factors that would lower recidivism rates would be if we only measured against new criminal convictions rather than the offender returning to prison for technical violations of release—like failing to notify a probation officer about a change of address, or something like that. In any event, the majority of people who served time in prison returned to confinement after release. Prisons prepare people for continuing cycles of failure.

Days since my release from prison: 324

Miles that I ran today: 0

Miles that I ran so far this week: 27.4

Miles that I’ve run during the month of July: 8.33

Miles that I ran so far in 2014: 1,367.27

Miles that I need to run in order to reach my annual goal of 2,400 miles: 1,032.73

Miles I’m ahead of schedule to reach my 2,400-mile goal by the end of 2014: 158.39

My weight for today: 167