Community service and suspended sentence with protective supervision in the Republic of Serbia versus recidivism

Analysis of the success of the application from the perspective of researchers

Abstract

Alternative criminal sanctions in modern criminal justice systems have proven to be a far better way of reacting society to easier forms of crime compared to prison sentences. In this paper, the authors analyzed two alternative criminal sanctions: community service and suspended sentence with protective supervision, in the context of the analysis of recidivism in the Republic of Serbia. The survey was conducted on a sample of 502 respondents which are during 2012 and 2013 served one of these two alternative criminal sanctions. Of the total number of respondents, 12% again committed a criminal offense (recidivism). Multivariate analysis showed that the only length of sanction and the outcome of the sanction were highlighted as significant predictors of recidivism. The convicted persons who were sentenced to a longer term sanction and those whose outcome of the alternative criminal sanction was unsuccessful will have a greater chance of recidivism. The results showed that the suitability of this model was good (χ2 = 3.699; p = .883) and regression was statistically significant (χ2 = 32.948; p = .000), although a relatively small percentage of recidivism (15%) was explained. Also, if these two sanctions are observed separately, a better effect in practice had a community service (11% of respondents recidivated) in comparison with suspended sentence with protective supervision (25.5% of respondents recidivated). The results are good and suggest that in practice the courts should moreover pronounce alternative criminal sanctions. It is also necessary that the Probation Service has sufficient personnel and financial resources for quality work with persons who have been sentenced to an alternative sentence.