ABSTRACT
The "what works" evidence-based movement in corrections is largely driven by the need to reduce offender recidivism. At the most basic level, recidivism can be defined as "the reversion of an individual to criminal behavior after he or she has been convicted of a prior offense, sentenced, and corrected". The official measurement of reoffending does have at least one critical difference with official measurements of offending: those who previously came into contact with the system may be placed on community supervision and thus be subject to a host of conditions that can result in them being more likely to be "caught" recidivating. The system-level of offender recidivism is probably the least researched of the three—at least in the criminological literature. Rooted primarily in organizational theory, the system-level of recidivism implicates organizational pressures, formal and informal practices, and widespread discretion on the part of community corrections officers (CCOs) as being influential for recidivism rates.
