It is not easy to write columns about that unusual word "recidivism."
The word is just a fancy term for "returning to jail."
Recidivism in most cases stems from a failed attempt at parole as a means from being released from a court sentence.
Parole, well, that is usually a pre-release from jail or prison for good behavior in most states.
Recidivism is what happened when parole fails.
If an Arkansan is sentenced to spend five years in the state's prison system, with good behavior or good time as the inmates call it -- the inmate could be paroled after half of the original sentence.
And sometimes that date could be even sooner.
Inmates sent to the state prisons will serve less time because; at current "recidivism" rates our prisons are full.
The state is, however, sending more and more inmates back to prison -- in record numbers and percentages these days.
With few or no more available beds in our prisons, the state's pardons and parole board has little choice but to meet, evaluate, question and finally release more and more parolees before their time to be out of prison.
Does this push to free up inmate bed space cause recidivism?
A new report, released this week, by the Department of Corrections, paints a bleak portrait of our prison system along with the pardons and paroles apparatus in our state.
Just shy of one-half of all state inmates, a whopping 48.2 percent, within three years of being paroled -- will be sent back to prison.
Prison, parolees, recidivism rates and statistics are unsavory topics to the general public. We, as readers of the newspaper and watchers of the real TV news, do not like to read, hear or see stories on prisons.
We don't like to think of the thousands of people who live in our prisons or who cannot function on the outside. They often revert back to being incarcerated in prison.
We as human beings do not like to fail.
Nor do we like to see other people struggling and failing. We don't like to think about people being sentenced to jail, much less of their on-going quest to stay out of jail for whatever the reason they were there in the first place.
Arkansas' prisons have an inmate population that will equal or surpass populations of the state's medium larger size towns.
Since 2010, almost one-half of the state's inmate population have been re-incarcerated and sent back to jail within four years.
With current recidivism rates at 48.2 percent, will the old high-water mark of 49.4 percent, back in 2002, soon be eclipsed?
There are more troubling numbers to ponder:
On the average inmates spend less than 17 months in the community, once released before being back in prison.
Male inmates are more prone to returning to prison than female inmates.
And inmates in prison for violent offenses some 52 percent, tend to return to prison by violating their parole.
African-American inmates, more than their white counterparts, seem to violate parole and be locked up again almost 49.4 percent of the time as compared to white inmates who have a 48.6 percent recidivism rate.
There is that ghastly hard to say and hard to understand word again:
Recidivism.
Harder still is how to fix that problem.
-- Maylon Rice is a former journalist who worked for several northwest Arkansas publications. He can be reached via email at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 10/07/2015