Evaluating Educational Outcomes after Serving with Electric Monitoring

• In Event: Administrative Data and Predictions

Abstract

Rehabilitation, including education, can potentially be furthered by less intrusive types of punishment. Several studies have documented that serving a sentence with electronic monitoring has a positive effect on recidivism. But there is a gap in the literature evaluating effects of non-custodial sentencing, when it comes to measures of rehabilitation. The purpose with this paper is to explore the effects of electronic monitoring on young offenders’ educational outcomes.

The non-custodial sanctions, typically, per definition lack random assignment as offenders with the worst records and highest risk of re-offending are found non-eligible to serve with e.g. electronic monitoring and placed in confinement instead. This makes it difficult to determine the causal effects of these types of sentencing as selection into the programs is dependent on the expected outcome. I use the reform in Denmark from 2006 introducing electric monitoring to all offenders under the age of 25 with a maximum sentence of three months as a possible source of identification. The reform constitutes a natural experiment where offenders with short-term sentences are “treated” with different types of sentences before and after the reform.

Author

• Britt Larsen, Aalborg University, Denmark