Citation

Paanila J, Hakola P, Tiihonen J. J. Threat Assess. 2001; 1(4): 41-51.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1300/J177v01n04_03

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The recidivism of violent crimes among released offenders is an important issue, which must be taken into account when both the appropriate length of a prison sentence and release on parole are considered. We studied recidivism among high-risk violent offenders during their incarceration, parole, and freedom. The sample consisted of 99 Finnish men who were evaluated by a special prison court between July 1, 1971, and December 31, 1995. Forty-two of the men were sentenced to the special security section by the prison court (PDDR) and served their entire sentence. The remaining 57 convicts served their terms among the normal prison population (NPS) and were released on parole after having served, on average, 75% of their sentence (duration of parole was the remaining 25% of the original sentence). During parole, the probability of committing a serious violent offence among habitually violent male offenders was extremely high: 214-fold (Risk Ratio 214, 95% Confidence Interval 152-302) when compared with the age-matched general male population in Finland. Violent criminality in the NPS-group was 5.2-fold higher (offences/person years) than among men in the security section during the follow-up period. Differences in violent criminality between the PDDR and NPS groups are explained bythe high rateofvio-lent recidivism during parole among the NPS-group (i.e., 34% of NPS-men committed violent offences during parole, whereas PDDR-men were not released on parole until serving their complete sentence). Serving the entire prison sentence (without parole after serving three quarters of the sentence) would result in shorter time periods outside prison and would postpone subsequent recidivism. Since the number of committed crimes decreases as a function of age, this would eventually lead to an overall decrease in the total number of violent offences.