Alternatives to detention in post-Soviet countries

• In Event: PWG - Rethinking punishment: Alternatives to traditional incarceration models

Abstract

The issue of imprisonment and its alternatives is one of the most important problems of contemporary criminal law and criminal policy. Statistics show a significant discrepancy in the use of detention between Eastern and Western Europe. In recent years, European Union countries such as Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Estonia have been among countries such as Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Moldova, Serbia and Montenegro, where the incarceration rate is very high, i.e. over 25% higher than the European median. These post-Soviet countries, although members of the European Union, are on par with third countries in terms of the scale of imprisonment. In 2022, the highest rates among European countries were consistently found in Lithuania (191.1), Poland (190.4), Slovakia (186.5), Estonia (165), and Romania (120.9). A slightly lower rate was recorded in France (106.7), while the rest of the European countries had a significantly lower rate, i.e. Belgium (93.9), Italy (90.2), Sweden (76.1), Germany (67.1) and Slovenia (66.4). In the case of Poland, the research results show that isolation sentences dominate over freedom sentences. Despite the existence of the ultima ratio principle, pre-trial detention is at the forefront of preventive measures at the preparatory stage, and at the sentencing stage, the prison sentence is quantified at a similar or higher level than non-custodial sentences, with only half of the detentions imposed being suspended for a probationary period. In turn, conditional early releases from the rest of the prison sentence in recent years have not exceeded 25% of all applications. Excessive detention in Poland has led to a prison population of almost 90%. The paper presents the results of a comparative research project on Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Romania and Slovakia and identifies solutions to increase the applicability of alternatives to imprisonment.

Author

• Anna Rybarczyk, Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences