Do you know what the recurrence rate is for U.S. prisons? It's around 44%. 44% of people released from prison, within a year, go on to commit another crime severe enough to end them up back in prison
That doesn't seem overly surprising. Just as the people who acted in 2010 in a fashion that did not land them in prison probably acted in a way in 2015 that also did not land them in prison, it's not shocking that people who acted in 2010 in a way that landed the in prison might also act in 2015 in a way that lands them in prison.
I don't think that being in prison from 2011 to 2014 caused them to act that way in 2015.
We're not going to randomly assign (mostly) law-abiding citizens to prison to measure whether prison adds propensity to [what would be re-]offend, but there probably is something that is different about the never-imprisoned vs previously-imprisoned population that informs future likelihood to be imprisoned.
> I don't think that being in prison from 2011 to 2014 caused them to act that way in 2015.
You would be surprised. There's no concrete evidence pointing to this, but some suspects, when asked, will say that they did it because they have nothing left to lose.
