Title: Determining the main factors for recidivism in Boston

Authors: Odysseas Kanavetas; Aylin Kosar

Addresses: Department of Mathematics, Leiden University, Neils Bohrweg 1, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands ' Department of Management, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ 08102, USA

Abstract: The goal of our study was to identify the specific reasons why recidivism occurs in Boston. Boston prison data was combined with stop and frisk data obtained from the city's open data site. This paper would help identify if individuals are being stopped by the police for crimes they might not have committed or were in the process of committing one and then were stopped by the police. Multinomial logistic regression and chi-square was used to see if any correlations among the variables seen in the frisk data can be found. The results for both methods showed there was a correlation among the variables from the frisk data such as age, race, category of crime, and police district.

Keywords: recidivism; multinomial logistic regression; chi-square; Boston; incarceration; stop and frisk; criminological theory; statistical analysis; juvenile delinquency; prisoner reentry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJADS.2021.113529

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences, 2021 Vol.14 No.2, pp.208 - 229

Received: 31 Oct 2019
Accepted: 20 Dec 2019
Published online: 10 Mar 2021 *

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