One of the most fundamental concepts in criminal justice system is Recidivism. Recidivist is a person who commits the crime repeatedly. It means the person after receiving punishment for the crime committed again returns back to the criminal behavior. He gets habituated to commit the crime. For example- A person commits murder and for this he got imprisonment and after completion of punishment when he came out of jail he again commits a murder. As a result of repetition of crime rearrest, reconviction takes place.
Recidivists are those people who have enough courage to commit crime again and again even after receiving punishment. They remain always deliberate in committing crime continuously in a calculated manner. More often recidivists are considered as anti-social, aggressive. The reformative theory of punishment completely fails for them. To prevent them from further committing a crime it is always preferred them to keep in imprisonment.
CAUSES OF RECIDIVISM
The cause of recidivism is a combination of personal, sociological, economic, and lifestyle factors. Following are those:-
Lack of education
The lack of education of a person leads him to become a recidivist. Suppose taking example of two people, one person is getting education, developing his skills, learning new things where as other person is not getting proper education thus he remains unskilled. As a result in today’s world of competition the later one can’t stand with the one who have enough skill. So to earn his livelihood the people start to indulge him in criminal activity.
Poverty
One of the reasons of poverty is unemployment. To run livelihood person choose one way or other to earn money and most of the time it is found that the person indulge himself in criminal activity. Also it is found that offender after coming out of the prison they face rejection. People reject offenders for their past criminal activity. It is the society only who doesn’t allow the offender to reform. As result they finds it difficult to earn money and run their livelihood which result into poverty. Thus, they return back in doing criminal activity.
NOT CHANGING LIFESTYLE/SOCIAL CIRCLE UPON RELEASE
For a successful rehabilitation offender after begin released must distance himself from all those people who are involved in criminal activity. If the offender remains with the person who is involved in such type of criminal activity then there is more chance that the person may return to commit such type of crime again. However the problem is that after offender being released from prison, it become difficult for the offender to make new friends because all the new friends shall ignore him for his past criminal activity. Thus offenders return back to old friends who are involved in criminal activity.
DEPRESSION AND DESPERATION
Offenders suffer from serious mental issues in prison and without proper treatment, they are being released. Even after release, they face lots of stigma like unemployment, ignorance, lack of support which forces them to go into a deeper state of depression and lead to involve themselves n taking drugs and involving in criminal activity.
Not proper Rehabilitation
Prison states that their goal is to treat and rehabilitate them. But it is found that offenders are not properly reformed. In prison the offenders suffer from mental distress. Thus after releasing from jail they again join back o criminal activity.
MEASURES TO CURB RECIDIVISM
Following are the measure to curb recidivism:-
1. Adequate treatment to be provided to prisoners before they are released.
2. Offender should be given proper education so that after getting released they find a way to earn their livelihood.
3. Society needs to change the attitude towards the offenders because criminal gets born from society only.
CONCLUSION
In simple word Recidivism means some people will re-offend after they have been convicted. Recidivism is a vital component to understand criminal justice system. However, determining why people re-offend and measuring how often they do so proves to be much more difficult. In this I have given the reason for recidivism but there are many other reasons which need to find out which lead offenders to commit the crime again. Further, proper measure need to be taken to curb recidivism.
REFERENCE
- http://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-792-concept-of-recidivism-in-criminal-law.html
- http://www.occupy.com/article/prison-recidivism-causes-and-possible-treatments
- https://marisluste.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/recidivism.pdf
This article is authored by Madhurika De, Fifth-Year, BBA LL.B (Hons.) student at ICFAI University, Tripura
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