The number of persons in Europe subject to sanctions and measures which keep offenders in the community grew significantly from January 2021 to January 2022, consolidating the last decade’s general trend, in contrast with the decrease caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in the previous year. These are the main conclusions of the Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics on Persons under the Supervision of Probation Agencies (2022 SPACE II survey), carried out for the Council by the University of Lausanne. (see also the Key findings).
The survey contains data on probationers from 48 probation administrations of Council of Europe member states serving different community sanctions or measures, including alternatives to detention such as electronic monitoring, community service, home arrest, treatments, semi-liberty and conditional release.
On 31 January 2022, the probation administrations with the highest probation rates were Poland (634 probationers per 100,000 inhabitants), Lithuania (591), Georgia (499) and Turkey (419). The administrations with the lowest rates were North Macedonia (15 probationers per 100,000 inhabitants), whose probation agency only started operating in 2019, and Montenegro (17).
Professor Marcelo Aebi, director of the SPACE surveys, said: “In addition to a general trend since the 1990s of criminal justice systems increasingly using alternative measures to imprisonment with the goal of keeping offenders in the community to favour their social inclusion, the increase in the probation rates between 2021 and 2022 can also be attributed partially to a return to normalcy following the Covid-19 pandemic, which affected both criminal activity and the functioning of the criminal justice system.”
