Non-custodial care in Sweden

Non-custodial care plays an important role in the sanctions system and forms a large part of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service's activity. Despite this, there are not very many Swedish studies about non-custodial care. The content of non-custodial care sanctions has been relatively invisible. In light of this, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) has recently been given several assignments by the Government in order to increase knowledge of non-custodial care.

The following is a summary of the three studies carried out by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. The first of these concerns probation in general (Brå 2010:10) and the second community service (Brå 2012:4). The third focuses on the so-called layman supervision, which constitutes a central part of the non-institutional care system in Sweden (Brå 2012:9). When the Government gives an assignment to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, in addition to carrying out an empirical study, this also involves carrying out an assessment of the results and providing suggestions for improvements. These are also included in the translated summaries. The report begins with a brief description of all sanctions available
in Sweden.