Ulla V. Bondeson - Alternatives to Imprisonment

With increasing incarceration rates in numerous countriesdespite widespread knowledge of the detrimental effects of imprisonmentthere is a paramount need for effective alternatives. Yet, even in countries where the use of community sanctions is more prevalent, there is often a lack of qualified evaluative research. Therefore, since the present book, which evaluates such alternatives, was out of print, I gladly accepted the offer from Transaction to publish a second edition.

The research that is described in Alternatives to Imprisonment: Intentions and Reality is unusual in several respects:

The book contains an appendix by Norman Bishop, former Head of Research in the Swedish Prison and Probation Administration. It was originally written for the first edition, and in it he describes changes that had taken place in the criminal justice system and in supervisory treatment related to the proposals presented in the final chapter of the book. In the present edition I will give an updated account of the Swedish penal system as it appears from the latest reports of official penal committees and the criminal statistics. It focuses on the most recent changes in the criminal justice system, primarily related to the sanctions analyzed here.

In Sweden, as well as in other European countries, crimes reported to the police have increased considerably, at least from the 1960s until the early 1990s. However, during the same period, the number of persons found guilty by city courts or by public prosecutors has decreased radically. This contradictory picture can partly be explained by a marked fall in clearance rates, the fact that administrative fines have been imposed for traffic and smuggling offenses, and further, that drunkenness has been decriminalized. Similarly, the number of sentences has declined, although much less dramatically from about 88,000 to 56,000 in the period 1975-2000. Fines imposed by the prosecutor have also fallen markedly to a quarter of their initial number, whilst the number of waived sentences has fallen by half during the same period. The number of fines imposed by the courtsabout two-thirds of which are day-fines and the remainder ordinary fineshas also fallen by more than half to just over 23,000.

Following a century-long Swedish tradition, penal committees over recent decades have repeated the intention to reduce the use of imprisonment and increase the use of alternatives. An official committee on imprisonment published a three-volume report in 1986 that included research findings showing no support for incapacitation, individual or general preventive effects. It advocated as a new principle of punishment, the penal value of the crime, principally emphasizing proportionality. The idea of treatment should not have an impact on the choice of sanctions, but might be an element in their implementation. In order to qualify for any of the alternative sanctions, the penal value of the crime must warrant imprisonment. And although the law that came into force in 1989 does not stipulate any maximum length of prison sentence, in practice an alternative is normally given to a first-time offender if the prison sentence would be under one year. Offenders less than eighteen years receive a reduction of 50 percent in the sentence. Another committee examining non-custodial sanctions came up with some new proposals, including community service orders. Finally, a penal system committee published a three-volume report in 1995 with proposals for a reformed penal system, stating that the sanction system must satisfy demands for proportionality, justice, clarity, predictability, and be characterized by humanitarian values. It also recommended new sanctions, some of which have later been implemented, such as intensive supervision with electronic monitoring.

Despite the good intentions, the number of persons sentenced to imprisonment remains at around 12,000approximately the same number at both the beginning and end of the 1975-2000 periodamounting to somewhat more than one-fifth of the total number of sentences meted out by the courts. The figures reached a peak of 16,000 in 1988-89 and have since gradually decreased. However, the figures for persons imprisoned over recent years do not reflect the numbers of those who in fact served prison sentences, since they also include those who served their prison sentences in the community under intensive supervision with electronic monitoring.

The next largest punishment category consists of the number of persons sentenced to conditional (suspended) sentences, which has roughly doubled during the same period and amounted to more than 9,000 in 2000. Of these, about 5,000 are combined with day-fines. Apart from fluctuations over the last decade, it should be noted that the increase over the last two years is due to the creation of options for imposing new types of combination orders. Conditional sentences make up somewhat more than one in six of sanctions.

The annual number of persons sentenced to probation was around 6,000 at both the beginning and end of the period, amounting to slightly more than one in ten of all sentenced persons.