North Dakota inmates sometimes sent back to prison for 'technical' reasons Friday, October 25, 2019
G.F. Herald
According to state data, North Dakota’s ex-state prisoners are headed back behind bars at about the same rate they were 10 years ago. But during that decade, that number has varied — and the statistics themselves are said to be bound up in questions of prison capacity, criminal law and the opioid crisis.
The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation tracks two broad reasons why released state prisoners might find themselves in state prison once again: either they’ve committed a new crime and been sent back to a state facility, or they’ve violated a term of their release, like not reporting to a parole officer — a “technical” reason for their return to custody. Both examples are called “recidivism,” a specialist’s word for the phenomenon, and the state tracks it over a three-year period from when a prisoner gets released.
And for prisoners released in 2005 and 2015, those numbers remain close to the same. Roughly 25% had a technical violation by the end of 2008 or 2018. The same is true of prisoners who had a new conviction, with percentages for both release years in the mid-teens.