Construct · 2 fields · 2 citations

recidivism: one construct, many systems

One name. One construct. Different systems. One map.

● invariant · one construct, two systems Nearest construct by meaning·not indexed
trauma surgeons borrowed 'recidivism' to frame repeat injury as relapserecidivism2 SYSTEMSCriminal recidivismGRISWOLD · 1978Injury recidivismSIMS ET AL. · 1989

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1978Criminal recidivism1989Injury recidivism
2026

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Criminology

Returning to crime after a sanction

In criminology, recidivism is a person's return to criminal behaviour after an intervention meant to stop it: a new arrest, reconviction, or reincarceration following release or treatment. Because the event can be defined and timed in several ways, measurement choices matter a great deal: Griswold's 1978 A comparison of recidivism measures showed that how one counts failure (rearrest versus reconviction versus return to prison, and the length of the follow-up window) changes the recidivism rate itself. The referent is relapse into offending after a correctional response, and it is the same return-after-intervention construct that trauma surgeons later borrowed to describe patients injured again and again.[1]

Unit
The share of released or treated offenders who reoffend within a follow-up window
Recovery means
Recovery here is desistance, the eventual cessation of offending; recidivism marks its failure within the measured period
Measured by
Measured as rearrest, reconviction, or reincarceration rates over a fixed follow-up, sensitive to the failure definition and window chosen

Trauma medicine

Patients injured again and again

Trauma medicine adopted the same word for patients who return with repeated injuries: injury (or trauma) recidivism treats violent or accidental injury not as a one-off event but as a recurring, partly preventable condition. Sims and colleagues' 1989 Urban trauma: A chronic recurrent disease followed injured patients and found high rates of re-injury and later death on return, arguing that trauma behaves like a chronic relapsing disease. The construct is the identical return-after-intervention idea as criminal recidivism, here the patient's relapse into injury despite medical and social intervention, measured by repeat-injury presentations rather than rearrests.[2]

Unit
The share of injured patients who present again with a new injury over follow-up
Recovery means
Recovery is sustained injury-free survival after the index trauma; recidivism is the measured failure of that
Measured by
Tracked by repeat trauma-registry presentations, time to re-injury, and re-injury mortality

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Nearby constructs

desistance1 fields · 1 citationsanchor · how people stop offendingcriminal career1 fields · 1 citationsanchor · offending as a sequence over a lifeaccidental2 fields · 3 citationsjingle · one word, two constructs

References

  1. Griswold, D. B. (1978). A comparison of recidivism measures. Journal of Criminal Justice, 6(3), 247–252. https://doi.org/10.1016/0047-2352(78)90006-5
  2. Sims, D. W., Bivins, B. A., Obeid, F. N., Horst, H. M., Sorensen, V. J., & Fath, J. J. (1989). Urban trauma: A chronic recurrent disease. The Journal of Trauma, 29(7), 940–947. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005373-198907000-00006

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