COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesYouth service – the social service’s role in the punishment ofyoung lawbreakersby Tomas Bons 1BackgroundHow to handle young criminals is a topic that is well discussed. In Sweden a new legislation for younglawbreakers were introduced in January 2007. It is now possible to sentence persons between 15-21 years ofage to Youth Service. It is a punishment which consists of two parts:1/ unpaid work between 20 and 150 hours depending on the nature of the crime, the penalty value. The unpaidwork takes place mainly at NGO:s, in the municipal organization but also in private companies.2/ participation in pedagogical program about crime in a range between 3-10 hours depending both on the crimebut it also vary from municipality to municipality.Youth Service was before 2007 something the court could sentence to but only for persons who were judged inneed of care by the social services´, but were not considered to be in need of closed institutional youth care. Butafter 2007 it is only persons with no need (or a minor need for treatment) who can be sentenced.To be sentenced to Youth Service also require the persons´ acceptance. You cannot be sentenced to if you don’tagree to it yourself. If the person doesn’t agree, the court can sentence to short time correctional care or fines.If a person neglects his duties concerning Youth Service (not attending work or not showing up at thepedagogical program) the person responsible at the Social Service will report this to the prosecutor and a newtrial may take place.I think one can state that the main purpose with Youth Service was to decrease the sentences of fine in order fora program were the youngster in a sense pay something back, the unpaid work, and also attending a dialogueconcerning crime which aim to alter criminal thoughts. You can look upon it as a pedagogical initiative as a way oftrying to change a criminal lifestyle.Furthermore one can discover an irregularity in the legislation concerning Youth Service. When a person acceptsYouth Service the information of this person stays in the Criminal Records Registry for 10 years. But if a persondoes not accept Youth Service and instead is being sentenced to economical fines the information in the registrystays there only for 5 years. This has given parents with a better socioeconomic status the opportunity to, so tospeak, pay off the sentence. There is some empirical evidence that this loophole has been used by more wealthy1Research and Development Unit Södertörn (FoU-Södertörn) Römossevägen 25 146 31 Tullinge Sweden tomas.bons@fou-sodertorn.se279