Thirty years of prison alternatives in Denmark: Policy efficiency and inequality before the law

The use of non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment has grown dramatically over the past 30 years in the Nordic region. But few studies have analyzed the implications of this development. This paper focuses on the case of community service and home confinement under electronic monitoring in Denmark, programs that have been expanded 12 times since 1992. Results from population registry data analyses show that the risk of serving the equivalent of a prison sentence of up to a year in prison is currently below 50% because of these alternatives. Results further indicate persistent inequality in access to non-custodial alternatives along income, education, and ethnic background gradients. However, they also show that differences in recidivism rates across these gradients largely exceed differences that arise from the endogenous selection of people to alternatives within these gradients. Both in general and across the mentioned gradients, reform estimates suggest little to no causal impact of non-custodial alternatives on rates of criminal recidivism. Results thus portray the challenge of striking a balance between the principle of equality before the law and policy efficiency when implementing “smart sentences”.