PhD defence G.J. (Gwendolyn) Koops - Geuze

Brief summary of the doctoral thesis:

This dissertation examined the effects of community sanctions administered to court-convicted youth offenders. In the Netherlands, community sanctions are by far the most commonly imposed sentence among youth offenders, also at the most advanced, court stage of the juvenile justice system.

This doctoral research study employed a mixed methods design. The quantitative approach included a meta-analysis and a quasi-experimental study, investigating the recidivism effects of community sanctions on a large scale. The qualitative approach involved interviews with court-convicted, community sanctioned youth at multiple intervals (before, during, and 6 months after their sentence). Herein, the short and longer-term perceived effects of community sanctions were analyzed from the perspective of court-convicted youths subject to theses sanctions themselves.

The quantitative analyses yielded three main findings that provided important insights regarding the recidivism effects of community sanctions. Firstly, the combined findings from the meta-analysis and the quasi-experiment provided strong indications that community sanctions are more effective than (short) custodial sancitons in reducing overall and serious recidivism among court-convicted youth offenders. This was also found for community-sanctioned youth offenders with a higher likelihood of recidivism. And among lower-risk, court-convicted youth offenders, this was found in terms of overall, serious, and very serious recidivism.

The qualitative analyses of the perceived effects, based on the experiences of community sanctioned youths themselves, revealed four key findings. Together, these findings provided deeper insights into how and in what ways community sanctions could yield certain desired (recidivism) effects. Firstly, a perceived effective element of community sanctions was the improvement of problem-solving skills during community sanciton administration, which could transform into improved decision-making skills in the long term. Secondly, the establishment of meaningful relationships with influential, pro-social adults during commnunity sanction administration and the conviction as a whole was also a noteworthy, perceived effective element. For some youths, this resulted in positive changes in (perceptions of) daily life and the strengthening of pro-social networks in the long term. Thirdly, a noteworthy opposite finding was that discrepancies between the substance of community sanctions and the underlying causes of the offence or involvement in criminal behavior could leave significant, unresolved social deficits. For some youths, these unresolved social deficits led to a definitive sense of criminal fate. According to the findings in this dissertation, this formed a significant barrier to discontinuing criminal behavior in the long term.

To summarize, the findings in this dissertation justify the (increasingly) frequent application of community sanctions to youth offenders, even at the most advanced stage of criminal justice system intervention. At the same time, this findings emphasize that in order for community sanctions to truly represent ‘the Last Straw’ that re-directs court-convicted youth offenders away from a life-long criminality trajectory into adulthood, community sanctions must be more precisely aligned with the specific underlying (social) needs of court-convicted youth offenders.