Shawn Bushway Writes About his Study on Prison Recidivism in The Conversation

ALBANY, N.Y. (Nov. 28, 2017) — An article co-written by Professor Shawn D. Bushway on the likelihood that prisoners released on parole will wind up back in prison was published in The Conversation, an online journal of academic research, news and commentary.

Shawn. D. Bushway's co-written piece appears in The Conversation. (Photo by Mark Schmidt)

Bushway is a professor of Public Administration and Policy in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy. His Conversation piece was co-written by David J. Harding, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Their research shows that convicted felons who serve time in prison and are released on parole are far more likely to wind up back in prison than felons who have been sentenced to probation.

The reasons are twofold. Individuals sentenced to prison “may simply be more prone to committing crimes,” the authors write.

“A second explanation is that prison causes inmates to become more likely to commit a crime upon release,” the article continues. “Imprisonment may disrupt ties to family and community, enhance the stigma of a felony conviction, create or exacerbate mental health problems or socialize inmates into criminal ways of thinking.”

Bushway and Harding’s original study was published in October in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

The Conversation is an independent source of news and views from the academic and research community. Articles are published online and are reprinted in news and media outlets nationwide.

You can read The Conversation article here. View a previous article on Bushway’s work here.

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