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Despite the forefront of this article being about recidivism (the share of people who return to state prison three years after being released), I chose to highlight a small detail that might go unnoticed. This is the lack of data readily available for the conductors of this study. Throughout the first few weeks of this semester, I’ve noticed this common trend involving data and the difficulty to obtain it. This article has a lot of similarities to the Eviction Lab, where many areas had unreported data on evictions. Here, the lack of data surrounding prisoners “has complicated efforts to understand the aggregate effects of myriad federal, state, and local efforts to reduce reoffending”. Missing or unclear data can lead to inconclusive conclusions.