Re-Arrest for Violent Felonies 08

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CJA

Research Brief No. 16

NEW YORK CITY CRIMINAL JUSTICE AGENCY, Inc.

January 2008

A series of reports summarizing current research from CJA Executive Director, Jerome E. McElroy Director, Research Dept., Richard R. Peterson, Ph.D. Research Brief Editor & Deputy Director, Research, Mary T. Phillips, Ph.D. Graphics & Production, Raymond P. Caligiure Administrative Associate, Annie Su

CJA is a not-for-profit corporation that provides a variety of criminal justice services under a contract with the City of New York. CJA staff interview defendants arrested in New York City, make recommendations for pretrial release, and notify released defendants of upcoming court dates. Within the Agency, the Research Department conducts studies covering a broad array of criminal justice policy concerns. The Research Brief series summarizes the results of some of these studies. New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc. 52 Duane Street New York, NY 10007 PHONE: 646 213-2500 FAX: 646 213-2650 WEB: www.nycja.org © 2008 NYC Criminal Justice Agency, Inc.

Pretrial Re-Arrest For Violent Felony Offenses By Qudsia Siddiqi, Ph.D. Defendants re-arrested for violent offenses present a serious threat to the safety of the community. However, our knowledge about re-offending for such offenses among adult defendants is quite limited. The existing research mostly concentrates on recidivism in general. Furthermore, the focus is generally on postconviction recidivism. Empirical research that addresses this issue is needed in order to inform decisions about pretrial release. The current law in New York State does not allow consideration of public safety in making pretrial release and detention decisions, but the findings could be instrumental to researchers and administrators in jurisdictions where consideration of public safety is permitted. This Brief presents the findings from a study conducted to examine pretrial re-arrests for violent felony offenses in a sample of defendants re-arrested in New York City.

An examination of defendants who commit serious, violent crimes while on pretrial release The research focused on the following questions regarding pretrial re-arrest: ● What proportion of re-arrests was for a violent felony offense (VFO)? ● Did the defendants re-arrested for a VFO commit the same type of offense initially? ● What factors differentiated violent felony re-offenders from other re-offenders? ● How did the factors that predicted re-arrest in general compare with the factors that differentiated violent felony re-offenders from other re-offenders?

This Research Brief is adapted from Predicting the Likelihood of Pretrial Re-Arrest for Violent Felony Offenses and Examining the Risk of Pretrial Failure Among New York City Defendants: An Analysis of the 2001 Dataset (2006) by Senior Research Analyst Qudsia Siddiqi, Ph.D. The full report is available on the CJA web site: www.nycja.org/research/research.htm Research Assistance: Justin P. Bernstein Systems Programming: Barbara Geller Diaz, Wayne Nehwadowich Address comments to the author at qudsia_siddiqi@yahoo.com

Please cite as follows, adapted to your citation style: Siddiqi, Qudsia. 2008. “Pretrial Re-Arrest For Violent Felony Offenses.” Research Brief series, no. 16. New York: New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc.


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