Project on fine default prisoners with substance abuse problems – preliminary findings of an evaluation and impact study

The Prison and Probation Service of Finland is responsible for the enforcement of prison sentences and community sanctions in Finland. Its aim is to prevent recidivism and increase safety in society. The penalties implemented in Finland include a conversion sentence for unpaid fines, which means that persons who fail to pay their fines are ordered to imprisonment. The conversion sentence for unpaid fines is considered a problematic part of the Finnish penal system as the persons who cannot pay their fines are often the most excluded people in society. A prison sentence alone cannot affect the reasons behind the offences because many of the fine default prisoners are homeless and unemployed and have substance abuse and mental health problems. Numerous short and repeated sentences make it difficult to get them engaged in the services provided by society. 

After the law amendment at the beginning of 2021, which expanded the use of conversion sentence, the Prison and Probation Service became able to place fine default prisoners in substance abuse treatment institutions outside the prison as soon as possible after their arrival in prison. To make these placements more effective, preliminary work started to taken place in cooperation with the Health Care Services for Prisoners, the municipal social services, and the substance abuse treatment institutions. Accordingly, the Ministry of Justice required that the Prison and Probation Service should start a research project to evaluate the selection and further paths of the fine default prisoners together with the impacts of the placement in relation to recidivism and integration.

The research assignment has three parts, but the key part of the research is the impact study, which will be constructed on a quasi-experimental research setting comparing two non-randomized (already selected or not selected by certain criteria to external placement) groups to each other in terms of recidivism and socio-economic integration. Pair matching will be done based on key variables such as the length of sentence, gender, age, and main offence. All the data collected with the help of client monitoring, the client data system, interviews and surveys will be combined with data considering recidivism and the socio-economic situation. Subject to sufficient time for impact and data analysis, the preliminary results should be ready to be presented in the conference. We should then have at least preliminary understanding of the differences of the impacts between the experimental group and the control group and which worked better, the treatment or the prison. In addition, we should have better knowledge of how procedural thresholds attached to the selection process could be lowered to increase substance abuse rehabilitation outside prison and which types of treatment or rehabilitation measures and post sentence service chains were the most beneficial for any type of fine default and short-term prisoners.