Society-Wide Determinants of Recidivism

This article discusses the society-wide determinants of recidivism, which has increased significantly in recent years, in Russia. In modern studies, the determinants of recidivism are reduced mainly to the characteristics of offenders and the negative impact of microenvironments on them. Society-wide determinants are insufficiently analyzed. Researchers use various approaches to explain the causes of recidivism. They distinguish objective and subjective factors, primary and secondary, general and specific. When studying the determinants of recidivism it seems expedient to apply a tiered approach. According to this approach, the causes and conditions of crime are considered at three levels: society-wide, sociopsychological, and individual. At the society-wide level, the determinants of crime are contradictions of social being and public consciousness-phenomena at the level of society as a whole. At the sociopsychological level, the causes and conditions of recidivism are the criminogenic effect of recidivists' microenvironment and the low efficiency of preventive work. At the individual level, the causes of recidivism lie in recidivists' antisocial features and in the criminogenic situation, which lead to another offence. In the course of the study, the author examined statistics on recidivism, identified its negative trends, summarized criminological views on the determination of recidivism, analyzed information on the state of the economy, politics, social and spiritual-moral spheres, made conclusions about the impact of negative phenomena on the recurrence of crimes; identified gaps in the current criminal law leading to re-commissions of crimes; conducted a survey of employees of the penitentiary system. As a result of the study, the author came to the following conclusions. Society-wide determinants of recidivism are: aggravation of socioeconomic problems against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, a decrease in the pace and volume of production resulting in the lack of jobs and thus of a permanent source of income for persons with a criminal record; disinterest of business entities in employing such persons as they possess no professional skills and have a low motivation to work; poor organization of assistance in the social adaptation of former convicts; deficiencies in the criminal policy in relation to persons who have previously committed crimes; deformation of legal consciousness and prevalence of criminal subculture standards in society.

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