Consequences of criminal sanctions in Sweden

Swedish crime policy has in recent years become increasingly focused on harsher sanctions, a development which has led to an increasing number of offenders in prison. This development raises questions regarding the pros and cons of a more punitive crime policy.

The research literature on the consequences of punishment is vast, but is almost totally dominated by American research, a crime policy context from which it is difficult to generalize to Swedish circumstances.This project aims at filling some of the knowledge gaps which have been identified in the literature.

We lack, for example, a systematic review of European and Scandinavian research on the consequences of punishment and if and how the results from these studies deviate from those from American research.

We also lack knowledge of how what happens inside prison walls, such as rehabilitation programs, impact on the effect of imprisonment.

In the Swedish context we also know little of the long-term effects of non-custodial sanctions as an alternative to incarceration, longer prison terms, and early experiences of exposure to the criminal justice system.We plan for five studies of which one is a systematic review of research.

In the other four studies we use high quality Swedish administrative register data and adopt a quasi-experimental analytical approach to address the endogeneity issues which arise from the selection of predisposed individuals into various forms of punishment. The outcomes in focus are school results, labor market attachment, health, and re-conviction.