More probation, more prisoners? Community sanctions and mass supervision in Lithuania

• In Event: Punishment and rehabilitation: balancing competing goals?

Abstract

The paper will examine Lithuania's probation practice as a mass supervision phenomenon. While the high imprisonment rate is often portrayed as a prominent feature of Lithuania's criminal justice system, it's noteworthy that Lithuania also has one of Europe's largest populations under probation supervision. Within the spectrum of non-custodial sentences, probation takes precedence and is considered the most stringent, particularly regarding control intensity and legal consequences for probation rule violations. Over the past fifteen years, numerous legal and institutional reforms have been implemented within the probation system. The stated objectives of these reforms are to reduce the prison population and enhance the resocialisation of offenders. However, the chapter delves into the presumption that the probation system and its reforms foster conditions for expanding criminal control within the community, a phenomenon often described as "net widening." The paper also presumes that the wide use of control measures such as electronic monitoring has a desocialising rather than socialising effect on offenders.

Author

• Simonas Nikartas, Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences