LITTLE ROCK — Almost 45 percent of Arkansas prison inmates released in 2008 had returned to prison by the end of last year, giving the state prison system its highest three-year recidivism rate since 2003, a report by the Department of Correction found.
The report found that 2,831 of the 6,305 inmates released from prison in 2008 had returned to prison by the end of 2011, a recidivism rate of 44.9 percent.
By comparison, of the 5,783 inmates released in 2007, 2,330, or 40.3 percent, had gone back to prison by the end of 2010.
The change for inmates released in 2007 compared with those released in 2008 was the second-straight increase in the recidivism rate, coming after the rate dipped to 37.4 percent for inmates released in 2006.
Prison officials attributed the increase to a change in policy that resulted in a greater number of offenders being returned to prison for committing technical violations of their parole, such as testing positive for drug use or failing to report to a parole officer.
Since 2005, male parolees who commit such violations have been sent to the Omega Technical Violator Center in Malvern for stints of 60 to 90 days. A similar lockup for women opened in Pine Bluff in 2003.
The two lockups are operated by the Department of Community Correction, and inmates who are sent there are not counted in the Correction Department’s calculation of its recidivism rate.
In 2007, however, parole officials adopted a policy limiting the number of times a parolee can be sent to a technical violator center before he must appear for a hearing that could result in a return to a Department of Correction prison.
Under the policy, an offender who commits a parole violation can waive a hearing and elect to go straight to a technical violator center three times. For a subsequent violation, the offender in most cases must go before a hearing officer, who decides whether the violation merits prison time.
As a result of the change, prison officials said, the number of parolees who were sent back to prison solely for technical parole violations within three years of their release more than doubled, from 454 for offenders released in 2007 to 925 for those released in 2008.
Of the inmates released from 2003 through 2006, none was returned to prison within three years of their release for technical violations, according to the Correction Department report.
Correction Department spokesman Shea Wilson said in an e-mail that the recent increase was expected because of the change in policy on parole violators.
She added that the rate is expected to fluctuate.
“It will depend on the inmates released and how they behave,” Wilson said in the e-mail. “Example: one year we may have a good group who stays on track and another year, we may not, so there is the expectation that the numbers will go up and down.”
The Correction Department report shows that the three-year recidivism rate fell from 54.6 percent for inmates released in 1999 before increasing for inmates released in 2007 and 2008.
More recently, however, the state Parole Board has been revoking the parole of fewer offenders, at least partly as a result of Act 570, the sentencing and corrections overhaul passed by the Legislature last year.
The law authorized the department to lock up offenders in county jails for up to seven days for technical parole violations as an additional intermediate step before the offender is sent to a technical violator center or recommended for revocation.
Even before the law was passed, the department had begun increasingly punishing parole violators with other sanctions, such as increased reporting or community service.
From 2010 to 2011, the number of parolees sent back to prison for parole violations fell 37 percent, from 2,451 to 1,533.
Community Correction Department spokesman Rhonda Sharp said in an e-mail that the department hopes the use of “swift, certain and proportional interventions will lead to fewer times we are required to seek revocations which would lower the recidivism rate.”
Act 570 has also been credited with helping reduce the state’s inmate population. Since November 2010, the population has fallen from 16,400 to 15,049 as of Wednesday.
Over the same period, the number of state inmates held in county jails has fallen from more than 2,000 to 466.
State Rep. Darrin Williams, D-Little Rock, one of the law’s sponsors, said lowering the state’s recidivism rate was one of the main goals of the law’s proponents.
The changes the law made included reducing the sentences for many theft and drug-related crimes.
That could help lower recidivism, Williams said, because studies have shown that inmates who receive excessive sentences are sometimes more likely to commit more crimes when they are released.
The law also increased monthly probation fees by $10, to $35, and directed the Community Correction Department to use 75 percent of the extra money generated on programs that have been proven to reduce recidivism. As of last week, the $10 increase in fees had generated $2 million.
The law also directs the Board of Corrections to award grants to counties and judicial districts for programs aimed at reducing recidivism, although money for the grants has not yet been allocated.
“As you see that act become fully implemented, you’re going to see a real target on reducing recidivism,” Williams said.
Sharp said the Community Correction Department also hopes initiatives to create more housing for offenders who are released from prison will help bring down the recidivism rate.
For instance, the state Board of Corrections is studying a proposal by the Correction Department to close some prison space and use the money that would have been used for its operation to establish more parolee housing.
The Community Correction Department has also said it plans to house about 30 parolees in buildings in Pine Bluff on the same campus as two minimum security lockups for nonviolent offenders.
“Having a stable home enhances successful re-entry therefore we have hopes it will reduce the rate of recidivism,” Sharp said in the e-mail.
The city of Pine Bluff has filed a lawsuit seeking to require the department to apply for zoning approval on the project. Although Community Correction Department officials said earlier that buildings were expected to begin housing parolees this month, Sharp said in the e-mail that the department has “no set opening date” for the project. She declined to say whether the department would begin housing parolees there while the lawsuit is pending.
A hearing in the case is set for May 7.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/23/2012