Reconviction as an outcome measure in research - A methodological note

Crime reduction is a current theme in government policy for England and Wales. The main outcome to assess reduced offending is reconviction. There is current pressure from government and criminal justice organizations to measure their performance in terms of reconviction rates. Reconviction rates have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of a range of crime reduction initiatives, e.g. the evaluation of rehabilitative programmes for offenders. Over the last decade, there has been a resurgence in reconviction outcome studies and growing numbers of criminologists are involved in this work. This note summarizes the methodological issues in reconviction research, including the inherent properties of reconviction as a measure and the experimental design of the reconviction study.