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DOES THE TIME CAUSE THE CRIME? AN EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TIME SERVED AND REOFFENDING IN THE NETHERLANDS *
Author(s) -
SNODGRASS G. MATTHEW,
BLOKLAND ARJAN A. J.,
HAVILAND AMELIA,
NIEUWBEERTA PAUL,
NAGIN DANIEL S.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00254.x
Subject(s) - prison , psychology , criminology , sentence , sample (material) , generalization , computer science , mathematics , artificial intelligence , mathematical analysis , chemistry , chromatography
This work uses a sample of Dutch offenders, serving an average of 6.7 months of confinement, to examine the relationship between time served in prison and future criminality. To overcome the selection issues inherent in this examination, this article introduces a new method to the criminological literature that relies on a generalization of the propensity score to control for observed differences in offenders sentenced to different periods of confinement. On the whole, very little evidence of a relationship between time served and future offending was found. In particular, 3‐year reconviction rate and the proportion of offenders reconvicted in the next 3 years do not seem to depend on incarceration length. Although a relationship between time served and future sentence length was found, the evidence is modest.