Education Reduces Crime: Three-State Recidivism Study (Executive Summary)

The Three-State Recidivism Study reviews one of the major functions of the criminal justice system, that is, to rehabilitate. Over the past decade, greater emphasis has been placed on the other major rationales, specifically incarceration and punishment, without much commitment to rehabilitation. The result of the push to incarcerate and punish that occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s is an unprecedented growth in the
size of the nation’s prison and jail populations, even as crime rates have decreased. Given the economic hardship of maintaining federal, state, and local correctional systems, and the number of people in jails and prisons, society can no longer afford to ignore ways to reduce crime and lower over-burdening costs resulting from high incarceration rates. Since there are methods and programs that work, our intent is to bring this information to political leaders, the media, and the public to shed light on successful alternatives to the current system. This executive summary shares the results of the findings from the Three-State Recidivism Study.