Interventions To Help Promote Desistance and Reduce Recidivism
Q: How can the criminal justice community promote desistance?
No single criminal justice agency can promote desistance on its own. Partnerships across state, local, and federal agencies — along with the support of family and community stakeholders — are instrumental in supporting desistance from crime and reducing recidivism.
Law enforcement, courts, corrections, and community supervision agencies play a key role in the desistance process and reducing recidivism.
Law Enforcement
Contact with law enforcement may disrupt the desistance process by excluding access to key social institutions, such as:
- Educational opportunities
- Housing
- Family ties
- Employment opportunities.
Promising strategies that promote desistance involve active partnerships between individuals who engage in offending and law enforcement.
These partnerships can also benefit public perceptions of police legitimacy and procedural justice.
Courts
Confinement disrupts the desistance process, and it should be used only as a last recourse. When possible, courts and judges should favor alternatives to confinement for both juveniles and adults.
Prosecutors have an influential role in determining who gets punished and for how long. They can help foster desistance by avoiding further processing for individuals who do not pose a significant threat to public safety.
Corrections
Corrections institutions can help individuals desist from crime.
Prison and jail conditions that individuals experience while incarcerated can be tied to their probability of desisting from crime.
Individuals who are incarcerated need targeted and regular mental health check-ups that confront the root causes of violence and provide behavioral therapy.
Individuals can make constructive use of their time in prison if they can find meaning to their sentence, get to the root of the reasons that brought them to prison, and develop a plan for their return to society.
Community Supervision
Probation and parole administrators can promote desistance by striking a balance between informal control mechanisms, such as:
- Relationships with supervision officers
- Relationships with friends, mentors, and family members
and formal control mechanisms, such as:
- Curfews
- Returns to prison for technical violations
Supervision should also track and capitalize on individual progress and success. This can include:
- Reducing the length of the supervision period through good behavior and milestones
- Tailoring conditions of supervision to the individual’s needs
- Reducing recourse to incarceration for technical violation and low-level offenses
Incorporating desistance principles across all criminal justice agencies has great potential to improve outcomes, elevate practices, and better support individuals in their efforts to desist from crime.
