Long-term outcomes of alternative sanctions for youths in conflict with the law: the influence of individual resources and social context

Research problem and specific questions: This project aims to outline the use of alternative sanctions for first-time offenders (15–17 and 18–20year olds) in detail and assess their differential links to recidivism risk and future education and labour market attachment.

The project further aims to answer the questions of whether the spatial context in which sanctions are served moderates these associations.Data and method: The proposed project will utilize Swedish register data and will be able to follow 25 successive birth cohorts (born 1975–2000) from the time of their first criminal conviction and for up to 30-years.

These data also allow adjustment for a broad set of background factors by merging conviction data with a number of other registers.

The large national data also make it possible to perform gender-stratified analyses.Societal relevance and utilisation: Legal responses to youths’ involvement in crime are issues often put in the limelight and several proposals for harsher punishments for young offenders have been implemented in the past few years.

Yet research on the most commonly imposed sanctions for this group is relatively scarce and disproportionately focused on custodial sanctions.

The proposed project will help fill this knowledge gap and generate knowledge that may be of relevance to both policy and practice, for example in terms of weighing between principles of proportionality and culpability and principles of safeguarding youths’ wellbeing and developmental opportunities.Project realisation: The project will run for three years and finance a junior researcher for 80 percent of a full-time position.

The costs applied mainly pertain to salary for the applicant, including social security contributions.

In addition, there are indirect costs, for example covering office space costs, and expenses that will enable the applicant to attend international conferences and discuss the research with other researchers.

The project will be carried out independently but with great opportunities for support from experienced researchers within the same subject areas.