Final Project, you develop a 12- to 15-page research design paper for a criminal justice issue of your choice. (my choice is serious killer/murderer) Your paper should include the following elements:...

Can the recidivism rate of homicide perpetrators be reduced?
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Reoffence rates of Homicide Perpetrators
Description of issue
“Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society
has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant
forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.”
(W H Auden)
The single most important problem within the prison system is the rate of recidivism.
Simply putting people into prison is not enough; indeed, it could be claimed it means little to
nothing if all that happens once they leave is that they reoffend. High rates of recidivism
benefit the prison industry, but represent a substantial additional cost to both society in
general and the court and police systems in particular. It is axiomatic that incompetent
criminals go into an environment with a high density of more competent criminals, in an
environment that essentially degrades and brutalises by design. Expecting people to, after
going into this environment, leave and reintegrate into ordinary society is deeply counter-
intuitive.
The problem of recidivism is broadly studied, with many people pointing to the global
low within the Norwegian system. However, the things that allow the Norwegian system to
be so effective are simply not available in the United States. Norway has a very egalitarian
society (with a Power Distance Index of 31), with a low Gini coefficient (25.8), and is
relatively wealthy. On the other hand, the United States is relatively unequal (PDI 40, Gini
coefficient of 40.8), and while there is a significant amount of wealth at the top of the
economic scale, there are large regions of extreme poverty and poor infrastructure
(Muilanovic, 2010). It is in this environment that we must consider how best to reduce
recidivism rates, and therefore the ongoing cost to society of criminal behaviour. An
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additional problem presents itself given the pro-prison attitude of many Americans, who
believe (against all existing evidence) that putting people in prison and removing all rights
and capabilities from them will reduce reoffence rates.
Given this state of affairs, it is critical to both know what can be done to reduce the
recidivism rates and the extent to which these things can and have been done within the
United States. In particular, homicide offenders are the most likely group to commit new
violent or drug offences upon leaving prison (Roberts et al. 2007).
Research question
The research question that this study will examine is:
What can be done to reduce the rate of recidivism in homicide perpetrators in the
United States?
This includes both the relatively low rate of homicide reoffences, as well as other
crimes. While homicide perpetrators are relatively unlikely to commit homicide again, they
are still significantly more likely that the rest of the prison population to commit violent
crimes (Austin & Hardyman, 2004). This hypothesis would have to be tested within the body
of the study, and investigated within the literature review portion thereof.
Hypotheses
There are several related hypothesis that are relevant to this study, and which can be
contained within the study itself. Although the core research question contains the primary
hypothesis – that the rate of re-offense for homicide perpetrators can be reduced – this
hypothesis requires considering several other factors. Each of these hypothesis is critical in
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some manner to a properly developed conclusion and controlling for other possible variables
within recidivism, and as such will need to be either proved or disproved through the
background literature review leading up to the central study itself. These are that:
Recidivism is not inevitable
There are meaningful measures that can be put into place to reduce recidivism
Despite the differences between American prison systems and other systems, there are
lessons that can be learned from these places and put into action within the United States.
Although Homicide Perpetrators tend to exhibit high degrees of psychological harm,
this harm does not have to be continuous, and their behaviours can be remediated
Prisons, at least as they are constructed in America, do not effectively reduce the
recidivism rate.
Research methods
This research will employ a mixed research method in order to arrive at the most valid
possible conclusions and in order to allow for anomalous evidence to be explored and
hopefully explained rather than distort the conclusions of the research at hand. The three
main methods used will be a literature review in order to establish background and previous
work in the field, a series of interviews in order to provide qualitative data, and surveys in
order to provide semi-quantitative data. Ideally, these would then be correlated against a
background of data from government sources, such that the relatively local and qualitative
data can be viewed in the context of the country.
The literature review will provide both quantitative and qualitative data, with the
majority of the literature providing solid quantitative data and qualitative conclusions based
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on this data. This will provide a frame in which the investigation can be made, and will
include basic data from papers such as Langan & Levin (2002) and Beck & Shipley (1989)
The interviews will be used in order to find qualitative data. Since the matter under
consideration is one which people often feel strongly emotive about, it is likely that the
conclusions drawn from the qualitative data will be different to those conclusions from the
quantitative data. This is especially true in terms of what people think can or should be done
to reduce the recidivism rate, since as noted the most successful systems are those that
provide a safe, comfortable and activity-rich environment for prisoners, while most people in
America hold strong beliefs that prison is for punishment rather than rehabilitation.
The surveys will gather both qualitative and quantitative data. Ideally, these would be
carried out on a range of different persons, including parole officers, parolees who have been
incarcerated for a single offence but have not yet reoffended, and both single and persistent
reoffenders. This would allow the data gathered to provide a picture that contrasts what the
various stakeholders in the system believe at different points.
Finally, the entire research project would ideally be backed with government data on
the rates and types of recidivism. This is critical since a major part of the research...