Arrests as Recidivism

• In Event: Roundtable: Methodological and Measurement Issues in Criminological Research

Abstract

This article addresses the use of arrests as a measure of recidivism, and argues that the use of such a measure demands more care. Joan Petersilia has offered a checklist of cautionary steps that one should take when writing about recidivism; it includes a requirement that one be explicit about how recidivism is being measured. Yet even if that checklist is followed by social scientists, when legal scholars or the media discuss recidivism, they frequently rely on arrest data, without acknowledging this, much less discussing it. I point out some of the harms of unexamined claims about recidivism that rely on arrest rates. I also make suggestions about how it has happened that the media and legal scholars—including those scholars who would agree that arrests are often made in the absence of criminal guilt—so frequently discuss the vital topic of recidivism in a way that merges “arrests” with “criminal guilt.” I suggest that this merger is a prevalent one, albeit one that may be unconscious and that may be particularly common as regards certain populations. This merger is revealed in this and other areas of criminal legal discourse, and risks blocking efforts at criminal justice reform.

Author

• Anna Roberts, Seattle University School of Law