Objectives

The objective of this study is to estimate the price of retribution.

Methods

Based on administrative data on all sentences in the Netherlands in 2012 and recidivism from 2012 to 2018, we first investigate whether community service orders are more effective in reducing recidivism than short-term imprisonment using an instrumental variable approach. Next, we compute the cost savings that could be obtained by replacing short-term prison sanctions with equivalent community service orders.

Results

We find that short-term prison sanctions lead to an increase in recidivism and an increase in the costs of sanctioning. We find that Dutch society pays about 400 million euros per year for retribution. This is about 21,000 euros per sanctioned offense per year and about 45 euros per taxpayer per year in the Netherlands. This is most likely a lower bound.

Conclusions

Our study reveals the willingness to pay for retribution as implied by judicial choices.

中文翻译：

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报应的代价：与社区服务令相比，愿意支付短期监禁的证据

目标

本研究的目的是估计报复的代价。

方法

基于荷兰 2012 年所有刑期和 2012 年至 2018 年累犯的行政数据，我们首先使用工具变量方法调查社区服务令是否比短期监禁更有效地减少累犯。接下来，我们计算通过用同等的社区服务令取代短期监狱制裁可以节省的成本。

结果

我们发现短期监狱制裁会导致累犯增加和制裁成本增加。我们发现荷兰社会每年支付约4亿欧元的报复费用。在荷兰，每项受制裁的违法行为每年约需 21,000 欧元，每个纳税人每年约需 45 欧元。这很可能是一个下限。

结论

我们的研究揭示了司法选择所暗示的为报复付出代价的意愿。