Council of Europe report says number of probation sentences increases in Europe

“The number of persons subject to sanctions and measures which keep offenders in the community and do not deprive them of liberty grew by 3% in Europe from 2019 to 2020, according to the 2020 SPACE II annual survey, carried out for CoE by the University of Lausanne,” a press release said, adding that data for the report was provided by 29 probation agencies. The report said that the data reflects a trend “across Europe of community sanctions and measures such as electronic monitoring, community service, home arrest, treatments, semi-liberty or conditional release”.

It said that more than half of the countries which provided data showed increases in 2019 and 2020. “Ten of them registered significant increases: Serbia (34%), Azerbaijan (27%), Spain (State Administration) (15%), Slovenia (13%), Ireland (11%), Italy (10%), Lithuania (8.6%) Belgium (7.5%), Norway (7.3%) and Turkey (6.1%)… while eight experienced significant decreases: Armenia (47%), Bulgaria (22%), Greece (15%), Monaco (14%), Latvia (8.2%), Estonia (7.4%) and Switzerland (5.8%),” it added.

The administrations with the lowest rates correspond to two countries that started to use community sanctions and measures in the last decade: North Macedonia (6 probationers per 100,000 inhabitants) and Serbia (35), the report specified, adding that the incarceration rate in Serbia was higher than the rate of probationers.