Alternative Sanctions in the Republic of Serbia, Contemporary Challenges and Recommendations for Improvement

Abstract

The application of alternative sanctions has positive effects both on the re-socialization of perpetrators of criminal acts, and on the reduction of pressure on institutions for the enforcement of prison sanctions. The use of alternative sanctions enables the offender to continue working, educating, keeping family connections, and other activities that may have preventive effect on the crime re-commission and prevent stigmatisation that person might have after the prison sanction. The subject of this paper is the analysis of the effectiveness of the application of alternative sanctions in the Republic of Serbia and impact of the implementation of National development strategy for the system of enforcement of criminal sanctions for period 2013–2020. In line with the Strategy, the key national legislative acts were amended to align with international and European standards on alternative sanctions, specifically with the CoE European Probation Rules. Bearing in mind previous experiences, the authors start form the assumption that there are still certain challenges in their application, which can be caused by various factors. In order to give recommendations for reducing the challenges, the authors analyse the compliance of national regulation with international standards, as well as available data on volume and structure of imposed alternative sanctions in period 2015–2020, with the special focus on community work and conditional sanction with oversight.