Penal Prevention: Exploring alternative penal sanctions for young drug law offenders - project description

Summary

This project is a social scientific study of penal sanctions that aim to rehabilitate, educate and reintegrate young drug-law offenders. Such interventions, which are characterized by the promotion of individual change, are commonly referred to as alternative penal sanctions.

The sanctions under study are (i) conditional waiver of prosecution and (ii) youth supervision [ungdomsoppfølging]. The former comes in different forms, supervised enrolment in programmes being a common denominator. In these programmes, which involve regular contact with social workers and/or drug testing by healthcare workers, drug use is monitored and addressed. The latter sanction, which was introduced in 2014 as an alternative to prison for offenders below the age of eighteen, is administered by the Norwegian mediation service.  

The two overarching research questions are:

1. How are the alternative penal sanctions experienced by the adolescents and the persons administering them?
2. What are the socioeconomic/demographic characteristics of the sanctioned and the short-term consequences of the sanctioning?

The first question is explored through in depth-interviews with young drug-law offenders and social- and healthcare workers, while the second research question is examined through crime statistics and registry data for all indicted youth in the period 2000-2015.

See the full project description at Cristin for more information about results, researchers, contact information etc.

Project participants

Project leader

Thomas Anton Sandøy, Avdeling for rusmidler og tobakk, Norwegian Institute of Public Health

Project participants

Anne Line Bretteville-Jensen, Avdeling for rusmidler og tobakk, Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Solveig Tobie Glestad Christiansen, Avdeling for rusmidler og tobakk, Norwegian Institute of Public Health