The recidivism metric should be used as part of private prison bid selection and for determining whether the senior mgmt of a prison (warden etc) should be let go. Prisons with a bad metric should get focused attention to correct the problems (i.e. actually more money spent on them through hit-team style visits/supervision). Prisons with a good metric should get bonuses and public recognition.
A key legacy of no child left behind is that reducing funding as metrics fall is a very bad idea.
The problems with prisons cross private and public prisons. Private ones are likely worse, but even public ones are not shining examples of how to treat other humans.
That's a valid point, comparing to no child left behind. I'm not sure how to solve that issue- but at the same time, we currently have a system that incentivizes causing recidivism rather than preventing it.
The only folks that want to discuss recidivism are folks who don't benefit from the prison system (i.e. prisoners and their advocates).
If prisons were publicly measured and criticized based on on recidivism then wardens, parole boards, state and federal elected officials, etc, would all be at risk of being held accountable for the poor performance of prisons.
The public at large have really been fooled by this persistent avoidance of measuring prison success. Even a modest 10% reduction of recidivism (from 70% to 63%) would mean 36,000 fewer crimes and victims of crimes (about 10,000 prisoners are released weekly according to the DOJ).
To me that's the shocking part... improving recidivism would actually _prevent_ crime and reduce the number of victims of crime. Beyond that, there's the financial savings from reduced police man hours, courts, lawyers, and of course the actual costs of housing inmates.
Canada has a recidivism rate of 35% men/20% women, Sweden's is about 40%, Norway's is an astonishing 20%. If these countries can manage it surely the US can too.
A key legacy of no child left behind is that reducing funding as metrics fall is a very bad idea.