PA Bill Number: HB1472
Title: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contributions ...
Description: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contrib ...
Last Action: Referred to STATE GOVERNMENT
Last Action Date: Apr 22, 2024
Gun offenders more likely to commit crime again, says study :: 07/10/2019
SAN DIEGO -- Dennis Wallace Haggerty is not supposed to have guns. His felony convictions -- assault with a firearm and shooting at an unoccupied dwelling -- terminated that constitutional right.
Yet when parole agents with an arrest warrant searched his girlfriend’s Spring Valley home in May, they found a loaded pistol in a closet and an AR-15-style gun in her SUV, which he’d allegedly borrowed the night before, according to a search warrant affidavit filed by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
His rearrest -- for now on a parole violation -- follows a pattern linking gun offenders to a high rate of recidivism.
A study by the U.S. Sentencing Commission released last month reported more than two-thirds -- 68% -- of federal gun offenders were rearrested within eight years of being released from prison, compared to less than half -- 46% -- of non-firearm offenders.
The research also found that the rearrests happened at a quicker rate than non-gun offenders, and for more serious crimes.
And while criminal behavior typically dwindles in middle to old age, strikingly 39% of firearm offenders released from prison after age 50 were rearrested, almost twice as high as the recidivism rate for non-firearm offenders over 50.
The findings don’t come as particularly surprising to those in the criminal justice field, but it does reinforce the need for closer post-release supervision and rehabilitation, experts said.
“Just amping up the punishments for these behaviors without remedying the underlying causes for these behaviors is not going to do anything than fill up the jails,” said David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies American gun culture.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s focus on gun offenses comes as part of a larger examination of recidivism to help inform the criminal justice system on appropriate sentencing policies.
The study looked at a pool of 25,000 federal inmates who were released from custody in 2005, including 3,446 whose crimes involved firearms in some way.
The gun charges included everything from use of a gun during the commission of a crime -- such as armed robbery or drug trafficking -- to illegal possession, receipt, purchase, transportation, manufacturing or theft of firearms or ammunition.
The researchers tracked the offenders for eight years after their initial release for any kind of rearrest, be it a probation violation or new felony or misdemeanor.
Those with the gun charges had a much harder time staying out of custody, the study found.
The median time to rearrest was 17 months after release for gun offenders, compared with 22 months for non-gun offenders.
The most common serious cause for rearrest was assault for both types of offenders, but at a higher rate for gun offenders -- 29% compared to 22% for non-gun offenders.
Firearm offenders also had more extensive criminal histories than their counterparts, and previous research by the Commission has confirmed the strong link between an offender’s prior record and recidivism.
The demographics of the two groups of offenders differed in many ways.
The study found 48% of firearm offenders were black, followed by 41% white and 8% Hispanic. They were overwhelmingly male -- 97 percent.
Non-firearm offenders were largely white -- 44% -- followed by 32% black and 19% Hispanic. Women made up 20% of this category.
The study did not explore if demographic differences between the two offender categories were a factor in the recidivism rates -- a key point because blacks and Hispanics have long been arrested and incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates than whites for a variety of reasons, including societal and institutional biases.
A recent Illinois study, however, tried to control for such demographic differences in its research on the same topic and ultimately concluded that gun involvement remained a major factor for recidivism.
The study, published in July 2018 by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, found that 67% of the gun group was rearrested, compared to 41% of the non-gun group -- remarkably similar results as the Commission’s.
“Being initially firearm-involved was such a strong ... predictive factor of re-arrest that other variables, such as being male, Black, and younger at the initial arrest, added little explanatory power for the different rates of recidivism between the two groups,” researchers Christine Devitt Westley and Bobae Kang wrote.
Gun owners, whether they’re in the legal or illegal realm, often cite the same initial motive for possession: self-defense, according Yamane.
“If you’re involved in criminal activity, one of the major motivating factors of having a gun is to defend yourself against other people engaged in similar activity,” the professor said.
After release from prison or jail, gun offenders typically go back to the same neighborhoods or face the same enemies as before, Yamane said.
In a 2017 study at Los Angeles County jails examining inmates’ knowledge of firearm and ammunition possession laws, 39% reported having been shot at and 54% knowing someone who’d been shot at.
“But,” he added, “people on the illegal side of things are also more likely to use those firearms for criminal purposes.”
“Shooting and being shot at both justifies the need for a firearm and continues to drag them into cycles of violence that makes it very hard to get out of,” Yamane said.
The Illinois study also found that firearm-involved arrestees were themselves killed twice as often as non-firearm involved arrestees, most often from guns.
The research has significant policy implications, said Mack Jenkins, who served as San Diego County’s probation chief for eight years. He now sits on the state Council on Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health as well as the California Prison Industry Authority.
Gun offenders should be more closely supervised after release from custody, Jenkins said, including more frequent contact and searches to detect and deter access to firearms.
“Also closely associated with recidivism reduction is requiring the released offenders to participate in and complete Cognitive Behavioral Programs that help high-risk offenders change criminal thinking patterns, make better decisions, and more successfully re-engage in society,” said Jenkins.
He said services such as employment training and substance abuse treatment are also critical.
“But changing criminal thinking should be the priority,” he said.
https://www.heraldnews.com/news/20190709/gun-offenders-more-likely-to-commit-crime-again-says-study
