Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) tailors its programming and supervision to address each offender’s criminogenic risks and needs in keeping with the agency’s mission to enhance the quality of life in the Commonwealth by improving public safety. About ninety-three percent of individuals incarcerated in Virginia will one day be released back into their communities.

“We are in the business of helping people to be better,” said Virginia Department of Corrections Director Harold Clarke. “Virginia’s leading rate is due to the successful reentry programming and treatment offered by the Department of Corrections during an offender’s incarceration, and the effective supervision in the community after release through VADOC Probation & Parole.”

Bacon’s bottom line: Virginia should be proud of its record of low recidivism. Unless people are monkeying around with the numbers (a possibility never to be dismissed), we have the best prison programs of the 45 states surveyed for reintegrating felons into society. (I have written in the past about the special efforts made to ensure that inmates get drivers’ licenses and ID cards immediately upon release from prison, as well as programs in local jails to kick substance abuse, learn anger management, and master other life skills.)

However, I have to call McAuliffe for the boastfulness of his press release. The prisoners alluded to in the 2016 data were released from prison in 2013. McAuliffe didn’t set foot in the Governor’s Mansion until 2014. Whoever deserves credit for their low rate of recidivism, it wasn’t McAuliffe, it was the McDonnell administration. Hopefully, the McAuliffe team built upon the good work of its predecessors. But we won’t really know until McAuliffe is out of office.