Word: blumstein
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...possible that in some cases, particularly with first-time, nonviolent offenders, early-release initiatives could actually help reduce crime. "There are two effects of incarceration," says criminologist Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. "One is specific deterrence - you go to prison, and you say, 'Holy s___, I don't want to go through that again.' That is the crime-reducing component of prison. But the other effect of incarceration is criminalization. You have connection with gangs. You have diminished opportunities after you get out - and therefore you have some higher chance of returning to crime. Lots...
States can mitigate the risk of recidivism by providing inmates with job skills, drug treatment and other services they will need to reintegrate into the community. "Most recidivism occurs within the first three years," Blumstein says. "There need to be a lot of efforts targeted at people just coming...
...lose connections to their old neighborhoods, they also lose something good. They lose reasons to do the right thing. "One of the things that keeps people straight is the fact that there are people who are important to them around. They don't want to embarrass themselves," says Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon. "As you disperse people into unfamiliar environments, without these people they care about, there is less control over them, and they could become more troublesome...
...couple of years, the young men actually started deteriorating in other ways. They committed significantly more property crimes than the men who had stayed behind, the study found. "The presumption was, you get these kids in a good neighborhood and, by God, they're going to shape up," says Blumstein. "Well, in part they brought their old habits with them. In part they continued to interact with their old friends through riding public transit or whatever. And they were fish out of water. They didn't have the social control...
When I spoke to criminologist Blumstein about what happened in Houston after Katrina, he was not surprised to hear that evacuees were killing one another in a different place. "People who kill one another tend to be people who are like one another," he said. But he was intrigued to hear that the Houston police had noticed such a cultural difference. In that difference, he said, is hope. "Maybe there's a lesson here for how the New Orleans system ought to start shaping...