A Study Of Crime Recidivism From Life Course Perspective

Recidivism prediction is significant to the prison management and social security. In this century, lots of criminologist and Judicial researchers are keeping exploring the scientific recidivism assessment methods, and the risk assessment tools have gone through four generations. Though many researchers insisted that risk assessment should derived from theory, most researchers neglected theory when study recidivism. Nevertheless, the risk assessment tools in our country are still in second generation which focused on static factors and without theory background.This research try to study recidivism from life course perspective and applied age graded informal control theory which was construed by Sampson and Laub (1993) We went through two stages to study recidivism behavior. First stage was aimed to collect and analysis effective factors which have significant impact on recidivism behavior. Interview and expert assessment were main research methods in first stage research. In second stage we delivered questionnaires which were designed according to first stage results.31prisons in He Nan province were visited and1666valid questionnaires were collected. The results show that:(1) Antisocial behavior is the most effective factor in recidivism prediction.(2) Informal social control-social bonds plays a significant role in the desistance of crime behavior, however the effect are varied with age. When the released age is younger than20, the most important social bonds is family support after released; when released between20to32, marriage plays most important role in the desistence of crime behavior; when released between32to45, the most important social bonds is job stability. None of social bonds in our research has impact on recidivism behavior when released after45.(3) Positive performance during sentencing has desistance effect on recidivism; however negative performance doesn’t have significant impact on recidivism.(4) The impact of personality on recidivism was not observed in this search.