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More Sanctions – Less Prison? A Research Note on the Severity of Sanctions Proposed by Survey Participants and how it is Affected by the Option to Combine a Prison Term with Other Sanctions

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Abstract

Public opinion has come to be given an increasingly important role in the crime policy debate of western countries. The task of problematising different pictures that emerges from different studies of public opinion on appropriate sentences thus becomes an important task. In this article the question is whether survey respondents, in their choice of reactions to crime, tend to propose shorter prison sentences when they combine the prison term with other measures? If so, different response instructions can lead to different conclusions as to what survey participants consider to be appropriate sentences. Earlier research points at such tendencies to some extent. In order to examine this question, two comparisons will be made. In the first, survey respondents who chose to combine a prison sentence with other measures is compared with those who chose to propose a prison sentence as the only sanction. In the second, participant who were instructed to only propose a single sanction will be compared with those who were given the opportunity to combine two sanctions. Both comparisons are made with regard to the lengths of the proposed prison sentences. No systematic differences emerge. The correlation between the length of prison term proposed and the choice, or opportunity given, to combine the prison term with other measures varies, for example, across the different offences examined. The choice of appropriate reactions to crime is based on a more advanced deliberation than whether different sanctions may be combined.

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Notes

  1. A meeting between the offender, victim, support persons and other members of society. Both parties are given the opportunity to describe their view of the crime situation and of the consequences it produced. The participants are then required to decide how the “injury” caused by the offence can best be repaired. This might involve financial compensation for the victim, community service as a form of compensation for society, or similar measures (Gromet and Darley 2006).

  2. For a discussion of the level of non-response and its significance, see Jerre and Tham (2010). The non-response may have affected the general level of the prison sentences proposed by respondents. It is not as self-evident however that the non-response will have had a significant effect on the tendency to propose a shorter prison sentence in cases where a prison term was combined with other measures.

  3. The sentencing scale has been adapted to fit all five of the Nordic countries included in the survey. One of the reasons for not including stiffer sanctions was that having a very severe sanction in one of the countries would have expanded the sentencing scale for the other countries. An example of this kind is the sentencing scale for drug offences, which goes much higher in Sweden than in Denmark. Sentences of over five years are also very unusual in Sweden and account for only approximately two percent of all prison sentences.

  4. As one of the reviewers of this article rightly pointed out, it should also be noted that the student sample completed a shortened version of the population study questionnaire. The student version of the questionnaire included violent crimes only. It is difficult to know whether, and if so how, this may have influenced the results. It may have influenced the extent to which the two samples chose to combine different sanctions and/or the types of sanctions chosen to be combined with a prison sentence.

  5. When the analyses of the general population data were restricted to those respondents who correspond to the participants in the student data with regard to age and level of educational achievement, the differences found within the data set as a whole disappeared (data not presented).

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  1. Department of Criminology, University of Stockholm, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Kristina Jerre

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  1. Kristina Jerre
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Correspondence to Kristina Jerre.

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Jerre, K. More Sanctions – Less Prison? A Research Note on the Severity of Sanctions Proposed by Survey Participants and how it is Affected by the Option to Combine a Prison Term with Other Sanctions. Eur J Crim Policy Res 20, 121–136 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-013-9215-5

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