Share of 'habitual offenders' among convicts lowest since 2016: NCRB

Recidivism has been improving after the pandemic

The share of individuals with prior convictions among those jailed in 2021 is the lowest in years.

A total of 3,333 convicts (or 3.2 per cent) of the 104,735 people convicted in 2021 were people who had prior convictions. Home Minister Amit Shah pitched for prisons to be more rehabilitative on Sunday, and spoke of work on a new prison law.

The recidivism rate, or proportion of convicts imprisoned before, was 4.7 per cent in 2020. It was 3.6 per cent in 2019. The lowest in recent years was 2.8 per cent in 2016 (see chart 1).

“The low rate of recidivism is not because India has well-maintained rehabilitation techniques or aftercare programme but because of the low conviction rate,” said a 2018-19 study, “Recidivism Among Prisoners In Tihar Jail And Contributing Factors: A Qualitative Study,” by S Manikandan, research assistant at Centre for Criminology and Victimology, National Law University, and K Jaishankar, professor, Department of Criminology, Raksha Shakti University.

The study noted that the conviction rate was 46.8 per cent in 2016 and pendency of cases was 87.4 per cent. According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau numbers for 2021, the conviction rate is 57 per cent while pendency has increased to 91.2 per cent.

State-wise numbers show large differences in recidivism. It is 28.5 per cent in Delhi, 15.3 per cent in Mizoram and 8.8 per cent for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on the higher side of the scale. It is 0.8 per cent in Uttarakhand, 0.2 per cent in Tamil Nadu and 0.1 per cent in Madhya Pradesh on the lower side for those reporting any repeat offender convictions. Recidivism is zero in 12 territories including Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Goa and Gujarat.

Global studies have established that putting people in jail may not necessarily make society safer. It can make people more involved in crime, according to a 2011 study entitled “Prisons Do Not Reduce Recidivism: The High Cost of Ignoring Science” co-authored by the University of Cincinnati’s Francis T Cullen, Northern Kentucky University’s Cheryl Lero Jonson and Carnegie Mellon University’s Daniel S Nagin.

“We conclude that there is little evidence that prisons reduce recidivism and at least some evidence to suggest that they have a criminogenic effect. The policy implications of this finding are significant, for it means that beyond crime saved through incapacitation, the use of custodial sanctions may have the unanticipated consequence of making society less safe,” it said.

Harsher prison sentences do not necessarily lead to lesser activity, suggested another 2011 study entitled “Prison Conditions and Recidivism” from authors Francesco Drago of the University of Naples, Roberto Galbiati (CNRS EconomiX and Sciences-Po) and the University of Bergamo’s Pietro Vertova.

“(The study does not) find compelling evidence of (specific) deterrent effects of experienced prison severity. The measures of prison severity do not reduce the probability of recidivism. Instead, all point estimates suggest that harsh prison conditions increase post-release criminal activity, though they are not always precisely estimated,” it said.