Social and economic profitability of alternative measures to detention face to face with the visibility of the Romanian national probation system

Abstract

20 years after the issue of Ordonnance 92/2000 which was establishing the need to provide services for the social reintegration of offenders and supervision for non-custodial sanctions, called from 2006 probation services, a national study was carried out on the visibility of probation system among citizens. The respondents were all the probation services Chiefs in the country and their opinion confirmed the hypothesis that the National Probation System, ignoring the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers of European Council, don't have a promoting strategy nither the concern for creating a recognizable image among the other actors involved in the justice act. Consequently, the field has so far failed to gain full consideration within the Romanian Criminal Justice System and visibility among citizens, although after 2014 when the New Criminal Code started to be applied, the number of offenders attended by probation services was tripled and the staff's attributions war extended. The article is structured in two parallel planes, first showing the social and economic benefits of alternative detention measures supervised by probation services in the light of the costs of incarceration and the second showing the unfair lack of visibility of these benefits and the unknown activity carried out by probation counselors for the social reintegration of offenders.