Background
Similar to other states, recidivism continues to be a central measure in Utah’s criminal justice system. This site shows trends in 3-year recidivism rates for individuals that served time in prison on a leading felony weapon offense that were released on parole between 2014 and 2018. Four types of recidivism rates are included: 1) any return to prison 2) a return based on one or more technical violations 3) a new crime & 4) a new violent crime. Some exclusions were made for those paroled to locations that are not meaningful for recidivism analyses. A justice reform marker is further available on selected figures to indicate the year Utah implemented broad criminal justice reform. This event is important to highlight because some of its policies impacted how quickly parolees moved in and out of prison upon a revocation, which impacted both the parole population and its composition. This site was developed to in a flexible manner add new cohorts as they become available.
Key Findings
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Technical violations were the most common reason for being returned to prison within 3-years after release, making up ~80% of all recidivism cases.
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New crimes while on parole represented (~20%) of all returns. The majority of these crimes (~70%) were non-violent offenses and 30% was related to a violent offense.
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Recidivism rates were the highest for those classified as intensive-to-high risk to re-offend at >80%.
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Those who served time in prison on a Felony 3 weapon offense tend to return to prison on a modestly higher rate compared to Felony 2’s.
See the full interactive report:
Parolee Recidivism and Weapon Offenses 2022