In the criminal justice system, recidivism is one of the significant concepts. It refers to an individual relapse into criminal behaviors after receiving sanctions or while undergoing intervention from a previous crime. It is measured through criminal acts that result in reconviction, rearrest, or returning to jails with a new sentence. Notably, recidivism is crucial while considering primary criminal justice topics, including rehabilitation, specific deterrence, and incapacitation. In the past, recidivism has been used to study the differences between the effectiveness of public and private managed prisons. Positive and close family relationships reduce recidivism. Recidivism risks can also be reduced using evidence-based programs by targeting criminogenic needs by introducing courses like cognitive-behavioural therapies in prisons.
Evidence-based supervision should be promoted through correctional agencies for better supervision outcomes like reducing the rates of recidivism and delivering a fair probation process. Notably, evidence-based supervision involves using techniques to achieve behavioral change for persons under probation supervision. Additionally, the supervision transforms customary face-to-face contact between people on supervision and officers by accentuating the significance of communication and developing quality working relationships. The behaviors of officers affect how people on parole perceive their experiences as just or fair. Probation supervision involves using compliance monitoring to help people achieve short-term goals like getting employment and address risk factors that reduce recidivism rates( Blasko et al.,3). Evidence-based supervision is likely to reduce recidivism if it is well established through need assessment tools.
Officers should use supervision approaches to address need factors that emphasize the importance of achieving long term goals. Components of every supervision should be incorporated to help manage released prisoners and hold them responsible during treatment agencies, parole agencies, and judiciary probation. Additionally, probation officers should use motivational interviews to address ambivalence to changes and implement problem-solving, active listening, and cognitive-behavioural approaches to achieve effective outcomes in reducing recidivism rates(Blasko et al.,3)” When officers incorporate evidence-based practices in their supervision other than concentrating on compliance they are likely to improve success in reducing the rates of recidivism “( Blasko et al.,3). The probation agencies should manage compliance with releasing conditions on court-ordered conditions regardless of supervision.
Justice reinvestment can be used to reduce recidivism and the massive growth of incarceration in US prisons. The concept aims at promoting legislating reforms and managing costs to improve the criminal justice system’s effectiveness as one way of reducing recidivism and improving public safety. Justice reinvestment accentuates the need to assess offenders to address their individual treatment as they manage their public safety ” ( Sabol & Baumann 2020 pg. 319)Justice reinvestment aims at reducing mass incarceration and develop capacity to the affected communities”. Through justice reinvestment policies, the funds for imprisonment can easily flow from state to local communities to manage offenders locally. In the United Kingdom, justice reinvestment focuses on reducing reoffending rates and not necessarily on community reinvestment. Justice reinvestment initiatives aim at reserving prison space for individuals who commit severe and violent crimes or those posing high public risks. A community-oriented approach that was the original appeal on justice reinvestment should aim to rearrange the relationship between corrections systems and communities. This approach should address implementation and funding challenges to reduce large populations in prison and recidivism rates.
Community-based programs are very effective in reducing the rates of recidivism. Regardless of fundamental programs and services, the correctional facilities lack the knowledge and resources to deal with recidivism. However, through the guidance of social workers and other professionals, community-based programs can provide services that should increase effective community reentry for ex-offenders. Notably, community-based agencies should provide continuous care in prisons, and thus social workers should collaborate with probation officers to address barriers related to high rates of recidivism. Community-based programs targeting to minimize recidivism and increasing ex-offender success can help if offenders are directly involved in the services. Community programs aim at strengthening and restoring positive social ties (Weisburd et al.,2017 422). These programs target certain risk factors directly engaged with offenders and prevent them from committing future crimes. Proactive engagement with law enforcement officers and civic partners promotes legitimacy and develops social cohesion and are some of the most effective approaches to mobilizing communities against committing crimes.
Summing up, recidivism is a crucial feature while considering primary criminal justice topics, including rehabilitation, specific deterrence, and incapacitation. Evidence-based supervision is likely to reduce recidivism if it is well established through need assessment tools. Through justice reinvestment policies, the funds for imprisonment can easily flow from state to local communities to manage offenders locally. The community-oriented approach, which was the original appeal on justice reinvestment, should aim to rearrange the relationship between corrections systems and communities. Community-based agencies should provide continuous care in prisons, and thus social workers should collaborate with probation officers to address barriers related to high rates of recidivism.
Understanding Gun Violence
In the criminal justice system, gun violence is a crime committed using firearms, including shotguns, pistols, machine guns and assault rifles. Notably, gun violence threatens the basic human right to life. It is a tragedy affecting people’s lives all over the world. Everyone can be a victim of gun violence, but it disproportionately affects people of color, women, and marginalized communities under certain conditions. Gun violence is a complex, urgent, and multifaceted problem that requires evidence-based solutions. Additionally, prevention efforts supported by developmental risk research can reduce the rates at which firearms are introduced into the community. Minimizing gun violence incidents that arise from criminal misconduct is one of the significant goals of the broad intervention strategies. Urban gun violence happens mostly around small networks of individuals who generate a share of both fatal and non-fatal shootings. To understand gun violence, it is important to be familiar with gun markets, social costs, gun availability, and the concept of instrumentality.
Gun Markets
Legal firearms business comprises new and second guns. The sale is made through Federal Firearms Licenses. The majority of states in the US do not keep gun transfer records, and criminal background checks are not required. This means prohibited people exploit loopholes to acquire firearms, thus increasing rates of gun violence. Gun markets help to understand how cartels acquire firearms and the illegal procedures they use. State data from intermediate transfers indicates that most guns are illegally diverted using unregulated market sources. ” Iron Pipeline” is of the significant gun-running routes where most guns are recovered in large numbers, particularly in New England and Middle Atlantic states(Braga et al .,2021,598). The underground gun market, which serves prohibited persons in disadvantaged neighborhoods, is characterized with considerable frictions because of inadequate information about stable gun sources. Guns recovered in Brooklyn, and Newyork are medium handguns and semiautomatic pistols. The local “brokers” is one of the common markets where offenders obtain gains ( Braga et al .,2021 605). The brokers usually have direct connections with established gun traffickers who operate in other states and place large orders of firearms. The illegal transfer of guns is associated with high transaction costs. This is because the criminals acquire recent guns less than six months before arrests for their current crimes. Law enforcement should make low–level transactions within the underground markets to make it hard for criminals to acquire guns.
Social Costs
In the United States, when criminals are charged with gun violence, it is difficult to defend or even avoid the injustice system. There are threats of gun violence that puts the country under social burdens. Gun violence affects communities which engenders and promotes costly avoidance activities. For example, kids exposed to gun violence experience psychological problems and perform poorly in school. Parents suffer from blood pressure while keeping their children safe from bullets. Notably, gun violence is not only a public problem but also an urban disamenity. The costs of gun assaults and homicide are relative to suicide and sometimes are associated with devastating emotional impacts. The concept of social costs cannot ignore in understanding the impacts of gun violence in the community. “Victim count is poor guide toward social costs of mass shootings in schools”( Cook 2020 p. 1377). These tragic and vivid events usually create some kind of stress for parents and lead to huge investment in protecting school children
Guns Availability
For cases of gun violence to be reported, guns should be available. Therefore, gun availability helps in understanding the root causes of gun violence in society. In the US, federal law prohibits most adults from possessing and owning guns. It means that efforts to keep guns away from criminals through regulating transactions are difficult to implement. The availability of guns in society has a major influence on weapon choices while preventing violent crimes. The rates of gun violence are different, and this is affected by gun availability. The availability of guns means “Immediate access”( Cook 2020, p.1378). There is a lack of strong consensus that police controls directed against illegal firearms could reduce crimes, particularly in hot spots.
Instrumentality
The concept of instrumentality is related to gun violence. It justifies concerns about gun homicide which is a major problem. Instrumentality also justifies policies that intend to separate guns from violent acts, like legal restrictions for carrying guns in public. The concept of instrumentality helps to understand the causal impacts of firearms. If gun shootings are associated with small-calibre acts, homicide acts are likely to reduce. This is an example of a measure of instrumentality in any interpersonal violence. Any type of weapon usually matters in criminal violence, including whether the victims die or remain alive. Notably, guns are considered the most lethal weapons meaning the most powerful guns are likely to lead to massive destruction. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is one of the misleading quotes about the power of weapons ( Cook 2020,p.1376). Guns used during a violent crime are more prevalent in the US compared to other developed nations.
Crime Prevention Strategies
Policies and programs to prevent crime should include police making early arrests to deal with dangerous gangs, implementing court sanctions for securing the correctional facility and advocating for death penalties. It is important to develop effective crime prevention strategies to develop a safe society. Notably, crime prevention is one way of reducing crime in society. Crime prevention consists of measures and strategies to reduce levels of crime and potential impacts like fear of crime using interventions. There are four significant crime prevention approaches: developmental, situational, community, and criminal justice strategies.
Developmental Strategies
Developmental crime strategies prevent anti-social behaviors among children and adolescents. Programs based on developmental strategies are different from physical and situational prevention since they emphasize incapacitation, rehabilitation, and deterrence ( Weisburd et al.,2017 419). Notably, developmental strategies are concerned with risk factors before the occurrence of crime. Developmental prevention strategies use the scientific method to guide the provision of resources for people and communities to address some of the conditions likely to give rise to crime and anti-social behaviors before these problems become entrenched. Developmental prevention programs reduce rates of crime and aggression. From a developmental perspective, criminal acts in children and adolescents are influenced by attitudinal and behavioral patterns learned as people develop. Parental training programs help children change their behaviors and participate less in criminal activities. Developmental programs aim at training children and adolescents in social skills by targeting risk factors like egocentrism, impulsivity, and low empathy.
Situational Crime Strategies
Situational crime strategies focus on the setting where criminal acts happen. These strategies do not necessarily aim to improve institutions or communities but reduce criminal activities. Notably, reducing crime opportunities can be achieved using manipulation and modification of the physical environment that affects offender perspectives about increased risks to crime. Situational interventions are usually based on several approaches, including reducing excuses, decreasing the rewards, and minimizing provocations to criminal activities. Some of the activities and programs implemented through situational intervention include street lighting, circuit television cameras and counter-terrorism measures. All these activities aim to reduce crime rates, particularly in marginalized communities ( Weisburd et al.,2020 422). Situational prevention measures have been effectively used to prevent and reduce cybercrime by increasing risks for apprehension and detection of offenders. Moreover, situational strategies concentrate on the possibility of the occurrence of cybercrime. The crime measures are implemented since it is assumed that threats are likely to materialize the actions to be taken accordingly. Situational prevention measures aim at detecting, responding to, and recovering cyber security incidents.
Community Intervention Strategies
Community programs are usually designed to restore and strengthen positive social ties linked to criminal activities. Notably, some effective programs usually target certain risk factors for teenagers within the community. Proactive engagement and general deterrence programs are considered the most ineffective approaches to reducing crime. The primary mechanisms for effective community programs are efforts that promote supportively and informal social controls for maintaining social bonds. The strategies accentuate the significance of neighborhood composition to determine rates of crimes by specifying communities and regions with high levels of transience. The community programs are very costly, but they have been effective in reducing crime rates, particularly in marginalized communities. Community crime prevention uses several strategies, starting with civic engagement and empowering people in response to crime issues in the surrounding neighborhood ( Weisburd et al.,2017 420). Community prevention programs should be inclusive and include key shareholders in the society who understands the root causes of crime activities.
Criminal Justice Strategies
Criminal justice prevention strategies focus on programs for the general offenders within the correctional settings. Some of the programs reviewed within criminal systems include cognitive and psychosocial behaviors. The strategies should concentrate on developing strategic enforcement that requires limited resources. It begins with collaborating with state, federal and local enforcement partners to understand the primary causes of crime activities. Through this strategy, parole authorities, prosecutors and probation officers are involved in providing the available information and intelligence to evaluate violent crime challenges. The law enforcement partners determine the effective strategies to prevent crime by acknowledging efforts from different parties.
Summing up, crime prevention consists of measures and strategies to reduce levels of crime and potential impacts like fear of crime using interventions. Developmental prevention strategies use the scientific method to guide the provision of resources for people and communities to address some of the conditions likely to give rise to crime and anti-social behaviors before these problems become entrenched. Situational crime strategies focus on the setting where criminal acts happen. These strategies do not necessarily aim to improve institutions or communities but reduce criminal activities. Community crime prevention uses several strategies, starting with civic engagement and empowering people in response to crime issues in the surrounding neighborhood.
References
Blasko, B. L., Viglione, J., Taylor, L. R., & Taxman, F. S. (2021). Sorting Through the Evidence: A Step Toward Prioritization of Evidence-Based Community Supervision Practices. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 00938548211036474.
Braga, A. A., Brunson, R. K., Cook, P. J., Turchan, B., & Wade, B. (2021). Underground gun markets and the flow of illegal guns into the Bronx and Brooklyn: A mixed methods analysis. Journal of urban health, 98(5), 596-608.
Cook, P. J. (2020). Thinking about gun violence. Criminology & Public Policy, 19(4), 1371-1393.
Sabol, W. J., & Baumann, M. L. (2020). Justice reinvestment: Vision and practice. Annual Review of Criminology, 3, 317-339.
Weisburd, D., Farrington, D. P., & Gill, C. (2017). What works in crime prevention and rehabilitation: An assessment of systematic reviews. Criminology & Public Policy, 16(2), 415-449.
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