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