A Quasi-Experimental Study on the Effects of Community versus Custodial Sanctions in Youth Justice

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15412040221133094
• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Date: 01 April 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice

2023, Vol. 21(2) 106–129

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/15412040221133094

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A Quasi-Experimental Study on

the Effects of Community versus

Custodial Sanctions in Youth

Justice

Gwendolyn J. Koops-Geuze

1

, Hilde T. Wermink

2

, and

Frank M. Weerman

1,3

Abstract

Although community sanctions have become a popular alternative to custodial sanctions in youth

justice, primary questions about the recidivism effects of community sanctions remain un-

answered. The current study aims to f‌ill this gap through a quasi-experimental analysis of 2-year

recidivism differences between 4,425 youth subject to community sanctions versus custodial

sanctions in the Netherlands in 2015 and 2016. Recidivism was analyzed in terms of overall,

serious, and very serious recidivism for the full sample, a low risk subsample, and a medium-high

risk subsample. Findings indicate that youth subject to community sanctions are less likely to

recidivate overall, and less like likely to recidivate seriously than youth subject to custodi al

sanctions. Community sanctions were found to be particularly benef‌icial for preventing very

serious recidivism among low risk youth. Additionally, it was found that medium-high risk youth

subject to community sanctions are less likely to recidivate overall, and less seriously than

medium-high risk youth subject to custodial sanctions. Implications of these f‌indings for future

research and practice are discussed.

Keywords

community sanctions, quasi-experiment, recidivism, sanction effects, youth justice

Since the 1970s, most western youth justice systems have increasingly applied punishment al-

ternatives to imprisonment (Cox & Godfrey, 2020;Winterdyk, 2015). Youth court statistics from

the United States (U.S.) and Canada indicate that in 2018, approximately 72% (Hockenberry &

Puzzanchera, 2020) and 88% (Statistics Canada, 2020) of youth offenders received an alternative

1

Department of Law, Society & Crime, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands

2

Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

3

Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Corresponding Author:

Gwendolyn J. Koops-Geuze, Department of Criminology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50,

Rotterdam, South-Holland 3062 PA, Netherlands.

Email: geuze@law.eur.nl

sanction that did not involve custody. Similar statistics exist in Europe, as in Germany this rate is

83%, and in the Netherlands, 72% (Jehle, 2019;Van der Laan and Beerthuizen, 2021). One reason

for this trend is Article 40 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC),

which mandates that youth justice responses must minimally interfere with the lives of youth

offenders given their immature developmental state, and thus diminished moral blameworthiness

(Feld, 2013;UN General Assembly, 1989). Another reason for the increased application of

punishment alternatives to imprisonment is a signif‌icant body of research which indicates that

custodial sanctions (involving conf‌inement or detention) may fail to adequately address the

underlying causes of crime, and rather have unintended harmful consequences for the effective

reintegration and rehabilitation of youth offenders (Cullen and Gendreau, 2001;Fagan &

Kupchik, 2011;McGuire, 1995;UN General Assembly, 1989;Walgrave, 1998).

One frequently imposed alternative to custodial sanctions with varying elements and pun-

ishment aims across youth justice systems is the ‘community sanction’, which typically contains

elements of learning, therapy, mandatory labor, supervision, or out of court diversion (Aebi et al.,

2021;Uit Beijerse, 2019;Winterdyk, 2015). Moreover, the punishment aims of community

sanctions range from retribution, restoration, rehabilitation, reintegration, and deterring youth

from subsequent offending (Bateman, 2017;Cullen & Gendreau, 2001). Noteworthy, the pun-

ishment aims of community sanctions in youth justice contain less emphasis on retribution, but

rather emphasize rehabilitation, reintegration, and preventing recidivism (Aebi et al., 2021;

Farrington et al., 2012;Piquero et al., 2013). Community sanctions as def‌ined in this study

(community sanctions imposed in the Netherlands), are limited to unconditional hours of

community service, short behavioral intervention, or a combination of both.

Nevertheless, a persistent, remaining question is whether community sanctions are as suc-

cessful or more successful in reducing recidivism as custodial sanctions, as community sanctions

were initially developed as a viable, alternative punishment option to custodial sanctions in youth

justice (Cullen & Gendreau, 2001;Fagan & Kupchik, 2011). Unfortunately, the evidence on

whether community sanctions in youth justice are at least as effective in reducing recidivism as

custodial sanctions is incomplete, especially compared to the available evidence in the adult

justice domain (Koops-Geuze & Weerman, 2021;Latimer, 2001;Loeff‌ler & Nagin, 2021;Nagin

et al., 2009;Villettaz et al., 2015).

Moreover, existing studies on this topic have two signif‌icant shortcomings. Firstly, the

methodological quality of existing studies comparing differences in recidivism between com-

munity versus custodial sanctions is limited. Studies of this nature rarely contain suff‌icient

methodological rigor to draw robust conclusions about the effects of community sanctions

compared to custodial sanctions (Koops-Geuze & Weerman, 2021;Nagin et al., 2009;Wong et al.,

2016). Secondly, there is a relative paucity of studies that provide meaningful insights into for

whom, under which conditions, and when community sanctions are most effective (Lipsey, 2009;

Mears et al., 2015;Wong et al., 2016). This is a signif‌icant gap given that sanction effects may be

heterogenous rather than homogenous depending on various dimensions, such as, prior criminal

history, post-release conditions, the counterfactual, and the demographic and social characteristics

of populations (Mears et al., 2015).

In this article, the afore-mentioned shortcomings will be addressed by means of analyzing a

large-scale, administrative dataset with criminal history, recidivism, and various recidivism risk

factors on all youth offenders convicted in the Netherlands in 2015 and 2016. Sophisticated

matching techniques are applied to create two rigorous, comparable groups to analyze differences

in long-term recidivism effects among youth offenders who served either a community or a

custodial sanction. Moreover, as the dataset includes enough unique individuals to examine

heterogeneity of effects, we analyze differences between youth of low versus medium-high risk of

recidivism.

Koops-Geuze et al. 107