From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Fri Aug 02 2002 - 12:03:09 MDT
On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 03:58:07PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> Charlie (Stross) writes
>
> > Since 1970, the recidivism rate for murderers released after
> > a life sentence was served ran at roughly 1.5%.
>
> By this you mean the rate at which convicted murderers were
> caught and convicted at least one more time for murder, right?
The 1.5% is the proportion of released murders who are convicted
of an offense committed after their release.
(Note that in the UK, the clear up and conviction rate for murder
is somewhere over 90% -- it's the one crime that the police throw an
anything-it-takes budget at.)
> Suppose that some person A is murdered in Britain, and suppose
> that x fraction of the populace is composed of convicted
> murderers whose sentences have expired. From what you have
> read and what you think, do you believe that the probability
> that the murder of A was by one of those x fraction to be
> greater or less than x?
Your question is extremely unclear, but I _think_ what you're asking
is, "are released murderers more or less likely to commit an act of
murder than memebers of the general public". And the answer to that is
"less likely", at least under the regime in force in the UK. (There's no
such thing, short of an overturned conviction, as a lifer who's "free";
they may be out on license, but they're subject to monitoring by the
probation service for the rest of their life, and can be recalled to
prison if there are any reasons to be concerned about them. They're also
well-known to the police, and they're the one category of people who
definitely understand the full consequences of being convicted of murder,
i.e. by definition they're under no illusions about being able to get away
with the crime and evade punishment.)
-- Charlie
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