Summary:
Improving outcomes for individuals under correctional supervision is a core focus for criminal justice researchers and professionals. Here we analyze a cohort of over 500 females on parole in Utah between 2013 and 2017, using time-to-event analysis. We find that risk factors for females on parole are different when the outcome variable denotes a technical violation versus a new crime, with 45 percent of females being returned to prison at the end of the 1-year follow-up time. Utah’s high recidivism rate coupled with the cost of female incarceration merits further research on this important public policy issue.
Data & Method
Records of 508 unique1 females serving time on parole between 2013 and 2017 were obtained from the Utah Department of Corrections’ (UDOC) database O-Track, each followed for 1-year after their respective parole start date. As informed by the national literature,2 demographics including age, race-ethnicity, and region (urban vs rural) of the parole, serve as important covariates. Additionally, criminal justice variables, including offense type (a binary classification that = 1 if it was a violent offense), offense severity (Felony 1,2, and 3 where 1 is the most severe), and the parolee’s risk to re-offend, defined by the Level of Service: Risk-Need-Responsivity (LS:RNR) instrument3 were included as important covariates.
Figure 1 shows the actual revocation rates by type of return. Overall, 45 percent of the females were returned to prison on either a technical violation or a new crime by the end of the 1-year follow-up time, with 38 percent being returned on technical violations and 7 percent being revoked on new crimes. The mean time spent on parole (within the 1 year follow-up time) was 265 days. Table 1 shows summary statistics and is available in the Appendix.
Empirical Results
Figure 2 show the Cox proportional hazard model’s hazard ratios with a 95 percent confidence interval for the outcome associated with one or more technical violations.4 As seen, high risk females show a worsen survival probability with a hazard ratio of 1.8 (at alpha= 5%). This implies that females that are high to intensive risk to re-offend are nearly twice as likely of being revoked to prison than low to moderate risk females. In contrast, the variable denoting no prior parole starts shows an improved survival probability and has a hazard ratio of 0.54. The other factor associated with improved survival probability include increases in age (HR=0.97).
Read the full report:
Female Parole Risk Factors