| The development of methodologies for the measurement of recidivism holds the key to the definition of performance indicators and the evaluation of different programs in the justice sector. In the past decade, recidivism has been measured for persons convicted in youth courts. The methodology for this work is based on the linkage of youth court records based on age, sex and Soundex of the surnames. Work is currently being done to develop the methodology to measure recidivism in the Corrections sector by tracking (for a period of five years) a sample of adults and youth released from incarceration and probation in M2. Plans for the coming year, 2000-2001, include the following projects: the application of the methods developed for Youth Court data to adults; bridging the gap between youth and adult criminal histories by tracking convicted youths in the adult court data-base; and the development and testing of a methodology for the identification of repeat youth offenders in policing data. As well, there is a project to develop procedures for the routine linkage of multi-sectoral micro-data to produce measures of recidivism. |
Updated 05/20/2006