Desistance and Legitimacy: The Impact of Offender Notification Meetings on Recidivism among High Risk Offenders

• NCJ Number: 251728
• Journal: Justice Quarterly Volume: 7 Issue: 33 Dated: 2016 Pages: 1237-1264
• Author(s): Danielle Wallace; Andrew V. Papachristos; Tracey Meares; Jeffrey Fagan
• Date Published: September 2016
• Length: 28 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2006-GP-CX-0017
• Sponsoring Agency: Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical); Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Evaluation; Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study evaluated Chicago's Project Safe Neighborhoods' (PSN's) Offender Notification Forums, which use "legitimacy-based" approaches to crime prevention among a population of persons returning to the community after incarceration.

Abstract

Legitimacy-based approaches to crime prevention assume that individuals will comply with the law when they believe that the law and its agents are legitimate and act in ways that are "fair" and "just." Currently, legitimacy-based programs have been shown to lower aggregate levels of crime; yet, no study has investigated whether such programs influence individual offending. The current study used quasi-experimental design and survival analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of one such program. Results suggest that involvement in PSN significantly reduced the risk of subsequent incarceration and was associated with significantly longer intervals that offenders remained on the street and out of prison. As the first study to provide individual-level evidence promoting legitimacy-based interventions on patterns of individual offending, this study suggests that these interventions can and do reduce rates of recidivism. (Publisher abstract modified)