Recidivism arises when being convicted two or more times for the same type of crime.
Recidivism is the repetition of a certain vice , error or slip . The concept is usually used in the field of law with reference to the fact of committing the same type of crime on two or more occasions .
Before entering fully into establishing the meaning of the term, it is necessary that we proceed to determine its etymological origin. In this sense, we can state that it derives from Latin, since it is the result of the sum of two components of said language:
- The prefix re- , used to indicate repetition or again.
- The verb incidere , which can be translated as “repeat” .
Recidivism in law
Recidivism is considered an aggravating circumstance when sentencing a person. That is to say: he who, at the time, was convicted of a certain crime and then reoffends, receives a more serious sentence on the second occasion.
Reoffending, in short, consists of reiterating guilt . At a legal level, it began to be taken as an aggravating factor in liability in the first decades of the 19th century . Previously, responsibility was only taken into account for crimes committed against property.
If we focus on the legal aspect, only those who have previously been convicted of a crime can fall into recidivism. Recidivism implies that the person has a criminal record .
Recidivism is usually linked to social factors.
The causes that lead to repeating a crime
It is considered that any person who commits a repeat offense in the crime for which he or she was already convicted and sentenced may do so for different and varied reasons, such as these:
- For social reasons , since the subject lives in a marginal environment where values and morals are conspicuous by their absence and where crime is the dominant note. These situations lead you to make the same mistakes again.
- For family reasons . This refers to the fact that many criminals reoffend because they live in broken families, with serious drug addiction problems, with examples of parents who have also been or are in prison... That is why sometimes the fact of living in of families without resources is what leads them to fall back into committing robberies and robberies as a way to survive.
- Due to personal factors . It should not be overlooked that there are also individuals who fall into repeat crime due to their own personality. Thus, there are those who do it because they need to live on the edge and are rebellious or violent, or there are those who repeat mistakes because they have mental problems.
The criminal system and recidivism
Nowadays, recidivism is often considered to be a reflection of the malfunctioning of the penal system .
A high percentage of crimes are usually committed by individuals who have already been convicted and spent a certain amount of time in prison. That many people fall into recidivism reveals the uselessness of prisons in reforming people and ensuring that they can effectively reintegrate into society and the legal framework.
The term in medicine
In the context of medicine , on the other hand, relapsing fever is known as an infectious disease that is characterized by a recurrent increase in body temperature.
Recurrent fever can occur in different forms. In all cases, it arises from an infection caused by bacteria from the Borrelia family.