Suspended Sentences and Service Labor in Israel – From Alternatives to Imprisonment to Net Widening

Abstract

Many jurisdictions have spent decades searching for incarceration alternatives in order to reduce their prison population. Most of these alternatives proved ineffective in attaining that goal. Instead, studies found that these alternatives acted as substitutes to other non-imprisonment sentences instead of replacing imprisonment. This known problem of Net-Widening, in turn, undermines decarceration efforts. However, some of the alternatives seem to be successful. There are studies that show that some alternatives to prison succeeded in substituting imprisonment after their introduction. This study examines two such alternatives in Israel: The Suspended Sentence and Service Labor. We show that while these new penalties succeeded in replacing prison sentences in the short run, as revealed by earlier studies, they failed to do so in the long run. Furthermore, and by analyzing the history of these two measures in the Israeli penal system, we show that sanctions can successfully reduce prison sentences when introduced and initially researched, but subsequently exert an unintended or potentially very different effect over time. Indeed, they might even increase incarceration at a later stage.

Keywords: Alternatives to Imprisonment, Suspended Sentence, Service Labor