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Publications

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Publication

Recidivism Among Formerly Incarcerated Adults and Youth in Washington State: Fiscal Years 2009-2021

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Corey Whichard, Travis Taniguchi - September 2026

Recidivism refers to reoffending after punishment. It occurs when individuals return to criminal behavior after they were previously sanctioned for breaking the law. Information on recidivism is commonly used as a performance metric for the criminal justice system. One of the primary goals of this system is to identify individuals who have broken the law and provide punitive and rehabilitative interventions designed to reduce future offending. By monitoring trends in reoffending, the results from recidivism research can help inform criminal justice policy.

The Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) has previously published reports analyzing trends in recidivism for formerly incarcerated individuals who were released to the community in Washington State. Those reports measured recidivism based on whether individuals were convicted of a new crime after release. The current report expands on past work by measuring recidivism using multiple indicators of post-release contact with the criminal justice system (i.e., arrest, charges, conviction, return to confinement). This allows for a more comprehensive description of recent trends in recidivism. We use this approach to examine patterns in recidivism for individuals released from prison and Juvenile Rehabilitation (JR) facilities during fiscal years (FY) 2009-2021. We examined how often individuals recidivated, how quickly they experienced their first recidivism event, and characteristics of the recidivism offense.

We found that it was relatively common for formerly incarcerated individuals to have contact with the criminal justice system. Between FY 2009 and 2021, more than 70% of prison and JR release events involved at least one arrest, charge, conviction, or return to confinement. We also found that recidivism tends to occur relatively soon after individuals return to the community. Most formerly incarcerated individuals experienced their first recidivism event within one year of release from confinement. Finally, we found evidence of changes in recidivism that coincided with the implementation of pandemic-era restrictions and State v. Blake (2021).

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