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Committee reviews bill to standardize recidivism definition and require annual justice-data reports
Summary
Legislative counsel told the Senate Judiciary committee the bill would create a new chapter in Title 13 defining recidivism, require multiple annual criminal-justice reports (bail rates, recidivism, arrest/clearance, sentencing), and includes modest FY27 appropriations to contract with a statistical analysis center.
The Senate Judiciary committee heard from legislative counsel on a bill to create a new chapter in Title 13 that standardizes the statutory definition of recidivism and centralizes criminal-justice data reporting.
Michelle Child of the Office of Legislative Legal described the proposed definition: "For purposes of this bill, recidivism means a relapse in a criminal activity as evidenced by an individual who's convicted of a criminal offense after receiving a criminal conviction for a previous crime." She said the measure uses the arraignment date for the subsequent offense when that conviction exists and starts the clock for the initial conviction at the sentencing date or the release date for sentences involving incarceration.
The bill would require recurring annual reports to specified committees, including: annualized bail-rate reports (aggregated by county and including holds without bail and bail amounts), recidivism-rate reports calculated using three- and five-year windows, arrest and clearance rates organized by crime type using NIBRS data, and aggregated sentencing reports showing combined years of probation and incarceration by county to help identify outliers.
Child told the committee that the state’s Statistical Analysis Center (contracted through CRG) would compile the reports and that entities holding relevant data must provide it to CRG. She said the reports should include demographic information (race, gender, age) when available.
She also read appropriation figures included in the draft: $10,000 for several of the reports and $4,000 for the annual sentencing report for FY27 to fund contract support and staff tasks; she noted that ongoing funding would be required beyond FY27 for the recurring reports.
Committee members discussed whether county disparities in sentences or supervision should prompt statutory changes or remain a policy choice; Child said the reports would provide the data legislators need to evaluate whether to act. Members clarified that arraignments that are later dismissed would not count toward the recidivism metric; the measure requires convictions (at least two) for the metric to apply.
The committee did not record a final vote on the recidivism/data-collection bill in the transcript; staff indicated further witness work and follow-up would occur.
