THE BEST OF: The following article, initially published on March 2, 2010, concludes that 82 % of Tennessee prisoners return to prison within the twenty year period after release.
This public interest piece might be described as pretty good advertisement for prison reform , reentry reform, and reentry courts. According to a 3/7/10 article by Michael Lollar appearing in The Commercial Appeal, Tennessee’s DOC claims recidivism rates of 51 percent when studied for a three-year period; this compares to national studies that average 65 percent over the same time period. But a 20-year study by Correctional Counseling, Inc., a Memphis-based behavioral therapy firm, followed 1,381 inmates that first did time between 1987 and 1991. According to the 20-year study, 94 percent of the latter group had been rearrested and 82 percent of them wound up behind bars.
