Front and Center #6: Recidivism and COVID, New Data Tools, the Year in Numbers

Post-Prison Arrests in Illinois, Before and After COVID

A new research brief summarizes patterns of arrests among those released from prison in Illinois between January 2018 and June 2021, exploring the nature of the offenses for which people were arrested after release, the timing of their arrests, demographic and other characteristics associated with the likelihood of being arrested, and the degree to which post-release arrest rates changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why arrests? There are lots of other good ways to measure success or failure following release from prison, including many (success in finding employment, getting housed, accessing treatment, etc.) that aren’t criminal justice measures at all. Even as a measure of recidivism, arrests may be over-inclusive: many arrests are not serious, or don’t result in prosecutions, let alone convictions. Still, because of the time it takes for the justice system to process cases to the end, conviction-based measures of recidivism will either miss many serious crimes or require an exceptionally long follow-up period. And anyway, for this population, arrests matter: if you’re on Mandatory Supervised Release (MSR) from prison in Illinois, arrest alone can trigger a return to prison. In fact, you must be sent back to prison (as a “technical MSR violator”) following arrest for certain types of offenses, including domestic violence offenses.

One of the things we found is that roughly one in eight (12%) of those exiting prison during the study period were arrested for domestic violence offenses within 3 years of their release. But overall, 75% had no violent offense arrests, and even in the highest risk groups (younger releases, males, and those with prior arrests for violent crimes), most had no violent offense arrests within 3 years of release. Arrests for murder were particularly rare (less than 1%).

Of course, it’s well to remember that arrests are at least in part a measure of law enforcement behavior. Because our analysis focused on releases occurring both before and during the COVID pandemic, and examined arrests during a follow-up period that partly coincided with the pandemic, we were able to see how COVID-19 mitigation strategies may have affected the arrest numbers. So, for example, compared with those released from prison before, those released after the pandemic began were much less likely to be arrested for non-violent crimes (16% vs. 24%), perhaps as a result of changes in police tactics and routines, like fewer traffic stops. But there was less difference in the likelihood of arrest for violent crimes (9% vs. 11%).

Prison Sentences for Gun Possession Offenses in Illinois

Another research report we just posted updates and expands a pioneering Center study of sentencing of gun possession offenses in Illinois. That prior work, published in 2021, was the first detailed analysis of gun possession sentencing trends and patterns in the state, and its findings had important policy implications. Our recent update explores the data through 2023, and it too provides policymakers and the public with plenty of food for thought.

One big takeaway: the Illinois justice system’s primary response to the problem of gun violence is enforcement of the laws that limit gun possession. Firearm possession offenses are prosecuted and punished far more often than crimes of violence committed with firearms. Both arrests and convictions for violations of gun-carrying laws have risen steadily. Penalties have increased, and so has the share of admissions to prison represented by gun-possession offenders.

For details, see the report. But the unmistakable trend here is growth: in 2022 and 2023, the numbers sentenced to prison for firearm possession were the highest ever seen in Illinois. By the end of 2023, one of every nine people incarcerated in Illinois prisons had been sentenced for a firearm possession offense; the number of people in prison for these offenses increased 62% between 2010 to 2023, while those incarcerated for all other offenses combined fell 41%.

Evaluating a Reentry Housing Pilot

One silver lining in the generally dark cloud of COVID-19 was the stimulus it gave to innovation and experimentation in all sorts of policy areas, including criminal justice. One small example in Illinois was a Reentry Housing Demonstration Pilot, launched in June of 2020 by a group of nonprofits with support from local philanthropies. It was conceived as an emergency response to the dangerous crowding in Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) facilities at the onset of the pandemic, and its original goal was modest: to provide housing and other support to 30 to 45 people returning from prison. In fact, over the 29 months it operated, the program served 122 returning residents, generated useful learning about the obstacles they typically faced, and developed some new ways to help them—such as “reentry navigators” offering sustained support with job-hunting and other challenges.

We collaborated with Smart Policy Works on an evaluation of the program, and found, among other intriguing things, that participants were far less likely to be returned to prison than others released during the same period. You can read the details here.

Two New Data Tools

MQPL Survey Dashboard

Readers of Front and Center have heard before about our work with the John Howard Association (JHA) on the Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL) survey in Illinois. The MQPL is designed to gather prison residents’ candid opinions on everything about the facilities where they’re held—their conditions, their atmosphere, their operation, and what it is like to live in them. Statewide administration of the survey in 28 IDOC prisons in 2022 and 2023 yielded more than 8,000 responses, and we’ve been collaborating with JHA to analyze them. In February, we posted a report describing some results.

Now we’ve unveiled an online dashboard that allows you to analyze MQPL survey responses yourself. You can use the dashboard to compare Illinois prisons across various dimensions, to focus on specific issues like staff-resident relationships, and to filter results by demographic and other characteristics. In a modest way, this work is intended to “shine a light” on institutions that are usually closed to public scrutiny, and to give a voice to people whose views are rarely heard.

Illinois Sentencing Dashboard

Another new data tool we just made available allows you to poke your way through twenty years of Illinois felony sentencing data. With the Illinois Sentencing Dashboard, you can pick out any of the state’s 102 counties and get a picture of its judicial responses to felonies from 2003 to 2023. Specifically, you can see how felony sentences were apportioned between prison and probation, and the overall proportion of felony sentences that were prison sentences during each of those years. You can also filter by geographic region or judicial circuit, or compare urban and rural county sentencing patterns.

If you take a look, you’ll see two big things. One is that counties vary a lot in their responses to crime. The other is that, statewide and over the long haul, there’s an unmistakable pattern: probation is up, prison is down. The Codirectors of the Center, Dave Olson and Don Stemen, made this point in a Chicago Tribune op-ed last December: without any big change in law, and despite the appearance of sharp partisan differences on crime, the Illinois data show a “quiet and consistent” shift in practice at the county level, such that probation has become a far more common sentencing response to felonies than prison. The steady reduction in reliance on prison has had no discernable effects on safety. It may reflect improvements in probation’s capacity or effectiveness, expansion of local treatment or other alternatives, greater sophistication regarding risk assessment, more awareness of the direct, collateral, and human costs of unnecessary imprisonment. Whatever caused it, it’s a piece of good news, too often buried.

The Center’s Year in Numbers

Finally, assuming you like numbers, we’ve put together a small bouquet of them to sum up our past year of learning, teaching, traveling, collaborating, presenting, and publishing at the Center for Criminal Justice. Check it out here. And thanks for your interest in our work!

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