Incentivizing Effects of Sanction Alternatives

• In Event: Reforming Community Corrections: Effectiveness, Equity, and Innovation

Abstract

Quantitative research on the effectiveness of non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment tend to focus on average effects on outcomes, not disentangling the driving mechanisms behind such effects. With this study, we direct attention to an overlooked driving mechanism behind the rehabilitative benefits of alternative sanctions, namely the incentives convicted people face to avoid going to prison to serve a prison sentence that was imposed on them. We focus on home confinement under electronic monitoring in Denmark, which is a non-custodial way of serving a comparatively short prison sentence. People sentenced to the relevant length of imprisonment are informed about eligibility requirements for serving in the alternative (and hence avoid going to prison). We merge granular register data on when the full population of sentenced people receive the eligibility requirement information and when they start serving the sentence (and under which conditions) with weekly measures of enrollment in active labor market programs (one of the requirements). For causal inference, we rely on several expansions to the electronic monitoring scheme. Results show that the mere availability of sanction alternatives with clear eligibility criteria may have beneficial incentivizing effects on sentenced people, which should challenge the way we think about sanctions and sanction alternatives.

Authors

• Lars Hojsgaard Andersen, ROCKWOOL Foundation

• Peter Fallesen, ROCKWOOL Foundation

• Rasmus Landersø, ROCKWOOL Foundation