EVALUATION OF TWO

ALTERNATIVES TO

IMPRISONMENT

Community service (TIG) and electronically supervised

home detention (DDSE)

Public thematic report

Public policy evaluation

March 2025

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Executive Summary

Community service (TIG) and electronically supervised home detention (DDSE) are two

emblematic measures of the policy launched over twenty years ago to promote alternatives to

imprisonment. At the beginning of April 2024, they concerned just over 22,000 people being

monitored under the TIG scheme and 18,000 under the DDSE scheme, a number equivalent

to almost half the prison population. In terms of annual volume, home detention under

electronic surveillance has concerned 40,000 people in recent years, or the equivalent of one-

third of the unsuspended prison sentences handed down (40,000 DDSE for 116,000 prison

sentences handed down in 2022).

Number of new TIG and DDSE cases (all types combined) monitored by the prison

integration and probation services (SPIP)

Source: Court of Accounts, based on SSER (Statistiques annuelles du milieu ouvert - Open

environment annual statistics) and DAP figures

These two alternative sentences are at the heart of the reforms introduced starting in

2019 to ensure that detention ceases to be the central response of the law enforcement

system. The place of community service and electronically supervised home detention on the

sentencing scale has been raised and specific resources have been allocated to promote them.

However, despite the stated ambitions, and although the implementation of these changes is

progressing, this policy has had no effect on the increase in the number of people in prison,

which reached a record level of 80,130 on 1 November 2024.

The Court of Accounts has therefore decided to carry out an evaluation of the

implementation of these two measures. It used a methodology based on statistical and

econometric analyses, field surveys in nine areas and three questionnaires completed

anonymously by representatives of the various parties involved (nearly 1,000 magistrates,

5,000 guardians and more than 900 cases monitored by probation staff). This approach

enabled us to answer three questions:

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Are community service and home detention under electronic surveillance sentences

effectively punitive in nature and are they used as such by judges?

-

Do community service and electronically supervised home detention sentences lead to

integration or rehabilitation?

-

Do community service and electronically supervised home detention sentences help to

prevent convicted offenders from re-offending?

Two measures that are slow to become effective sanctions

The use of community service (TIG) and electronically supervised home detention

(DDSE) as effective sanctions presupposes both that judges impose them and that the

conditions under which they are implemented ensure that they are properly enforced.

However, the assessment carried out by the Court of Accounts revealed shortcomings on both

counts.

Penalties that are not used as such by judges

After peaking in 2015, the number of TIG sentences has fallen in favour of DDSE

sentences, which are on the increase, not as a stand-alone sentence but as an alternative to

prison sentences, thus establishing themselves as a tool for managing prison overcrowding.

These divergent trends reflect two sets of obstacles that have limited their use as stand-alone

sentences by judges.

On the one hand, the need to meet other criminal policy objectives, in particular the

desire to speed up and increase the criminal response, has led to an attrition of first-time

offenders, who were historically the TIG sentences, and who now benefit from alternatives to

prosecution. On the other hand, magistrates in both the public prosecutor's office and the lower

courts, who have to take decisions on an increasing number of cases more and more

frequently in fast-track proceedings, do not have the tools they need to understand the social

and criminal situation of defendants. Their use of TIG and DDSE sentences is suffering as a

result.

In order to better ensure that TIG and DDSE sentences are imposed as sanctions, the

participation of sentence enforcement judges (JAPs) in correctional hearings should be

encouraged, as should that of all magistrates concerned on sentence enforcement

committees. It is also essential to improve the content of social investigations and facilitate the

collection of information by the associations responsible for them.

Implementation methods that undermine the credibility of TIG and DDSE sentences

The punitive nature of TIG and DDSE sentences depends closely on the conditions

under which they are implemented and monitored. These two dimensions determine the

credibility of the measures for all stakeholders.

Although convicted offenders are generally placed in a DDSE scheme quickly, for an

average of 4.5 months, the enforcement time of TIG is still too long. On average, this time

exceeds 16 months, whereas the average length of the sentence is 100 hours of work. The

Ministry of Justice must seize every opportunity to reduce these timelines. Public prosecutors

should be encouraged to prioritise enforcement. Within the penitentiary integration and

probation services (SPIP), the assignment of sentenced persons to the penitentiary integration

and probation advisors (CPIP) responsible for monitoring them must be faster and steered by

their director. Lastly, TIG centres should be set up where the size of the SPIP allows.

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Effectiveness and usefulness of penalties on six dimensions

Source: Court of Accounts, questionnaire sent to magistrates

Controlling the conditions of enforcement is an essential aspect of the penalty, but it also

is not carried out satisfactorily. In the case of TIG sentences, monitoring is mainly the

responsibility of the guardians during the time the person is present in the facility. However,

this period of less than one month on average is only a short episode in the follow-up time of

the CPIP counsellors, whose supervision of individuals sentenced to perform community

service is inconsistent and intermittent. This distance weakens the impact of the penalty for

convicted offenders and does not guarantee that incidents are dealt with appropriately,

although they are rare.

The situation is no more satisfactory for DDSE sentences, for which the monitoring

content is highly administrative and procedural. All the players involved, including the sentence

enforcement judges, are heavily involved in incident management, particularly delays in

returning home (21 "delay" alarms per measure on average, i.e. approximately one alarm per

week for a DDSE). All the levers must be mobilised at the local level to make this management

more effective (systematic delegation of schedule changes to the SPIPs, automated

management of "minor" alarms, review of alarm management protocols).

Two measures that contribute too little to the objective of integration

The characteristics of TIG and DDSE sentences should make them tools that can be

used to initiate a pathway to integration or rehabilitation for convicted offenders who have faced

difficulties and do not have easy access to the support mechanisms to which they are entitled.

However, the two measures rarely make this possible.

Convicts with multiple social problems

Community service and electronically supervised home detention are aimed at people

with a wide range of social problems, including in terms of housing, health and employment.

These difficulties are poorly documented, but the survey conducted by the Court confirmed

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that they are significant, and more so for people serving a TIG sentence than for those under

DDSE.

More precise analyses and the deployment of new tools are essential to better

characterise them and assess the needs of convicted offenders.

Difficult access to health and housing services

Unlike many other countries, France has chosen to organise access for people under

judicial supervision to integration support schemes under ordinary law. The Court's

investigation revealed that a combination of factors makes it difficult for them to cope in terms

of housing, employment and health. These factors reflect both the saturation of statutory

schemes, which are inundated with numerous other requests, and poorly defined funding

arrangements with unidentified budgets.

The solutions found on a case-by-case basis by local players are neither identified nor

evaluated, and their cost is not consolidated.

Inspired by these initiatives, targeted measures should be put in place to facilitate access

to ordinary law for convicted offenders, so that they can begin their integration process. They

could result in the State making a greater financial contribution to the management of a larger

number of convicted offenders, identified as the most vulnerable either because of their

extremely precarious situation or because of their environment, which is not conducive to

distancing themselves from the acts they have committed.

Too little support to make an effective contribution to the goal of reintegration

Despite the efforts made by the Ministry of Justice in terms of job creation in particular,

support for people sentenced to TIG or DDSE remains inadequate.

Each person is seen approximately 2.2 times during a TIG, i.e. one appointment every

six months or so, and twice during DDSE, i.e. one appointment every two to three months.

This limited coverage automatically leads to low impact in terms of integration. The Court's

analysis shows that, for all the cases it examined, only 33 % of people under TIG sentences

and 27 % of people under DDSE sentences were referred to integration agencies, partners of

the SPIP, during their judicial supervision.

This low level of investment in terms of support is one of the factors that explains why

TIG and DDSE sentences contribute too little to the preparation of a pathway to integration or

reintegration. The Court's assessment shows that only 26 % of the TIG sentences and 32% of

DDSE sentences in the sample examined had their employment situation changed during the

measure.

To strengthen the contribution of TIG and DDSE sentences to the preparation of a

pathway to integration or reintegration, in line with the objective assigned to them, initiatives

have been developed to increase support through

partnerships with specialised players and

the promotion of TIG pathways. These approaches, which make it possible to reconcile the

long time needed for integration with the short time of the judicial supervision, need to be better

structured, deployed and evaluated.

Inconclusive results on recidivism for TIG but more positive for DDSE

The policy of developing alternatives to imprisonment and sentence adjustments has

often been justified by their presumed impact on preventing recidivism. But the few studies

available in France are mainly based on a fragile methodology and old data. In this respect,

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they are often not really useful evaluations for public decision-making, especially as the

severity or frequency of recidivism is almost never measured. But the stakes are high.

Rate of recidivism within five years by sentence handed down in 2010

Source: Court of Accounts based on national criminal records

The Court's research shows that the rate of recidivism within five years of a TIG sentence

is almost 60%, which is close to the rate observed for those sentenced to unsuspended prison

terms. On average, individuals on TIG have profiles that are structurally at risk of recidivism,

given their young age, their low level of socio-professional integration and their criminal record,

which has already been marked by recidivism. Once the socio-economic characteristics of

convicted offenders are taken into account and econometrically corrected, community service

remains a sentence that does not appear to be any more effective than unsuspended prison

sentences in preventing repeat offending after five or ten years, even though the results are

more favourable for the TIG scheme when it comes to frequency or seriousness.

The results are much more favourable for the DDSE in its sentence management

component. In its view, the recidivism rates after three years measured by the Court are

between 9 and 19 percentage points lower than for "straight" exits from prison, without

sentence adjustment. But these results can be explained at least in part by the specific profile

of convicts who have benefited from this arrangement before or during detention. The

econometric analysis carried out by the Court makes it possible to limit this selection bias linked

to the profiles of convicted offenders. It suggests that there is greater effectiveness in terms of

adjustments under DDSE than in terms of detention without adjustment.

These encouraging results must, however, be interpreted with caution, given the

limitations of the available data and, above all, the fact that the analysis focused exclusively

on the 2016-2017 cohort, i.e. before the recent mass introduction of DDSE, which could lead

to a poorer 'profiling' of the convicts who benefit from it, and insufficient monitoring by the

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prison integration and probation services. In addition, it has not been possible to measure the

effectiveness of the DDSE-sentence due to a lack of available data.

The Court considers that there is an urgent need to improve the Ministry of Justice's

statistical apparatus to ensure proper monitoring of recidivism by people who have been

subject to electronically supervised house arrest or sentenced to community service.

Two measures that must become more effective and be mobilised to

combat prison overcrowding

The assessment carried out by the Court of Accounts on the deployment of TIG and

DDSE shows that the results of this public policy are insufficient. However, in a context of

chronic overcrowding, incarceration does not better fulfil the objectives assigned to any

sentence.

Overcrowding undermines the prison system

Continued growth in the prison population is leading to overcrowding, which reached

unprecedented levels on 1 November 2024, with a rate of 128.5%. Operating conditions in

prisons have deteriorated, with overcrowding, inactivity among inmates and an increased risk

of violence. The very safety of prisoners and staff is undermined by a situation that is now

beyond the saturation point. Prison is also failing to fulfil its role of helping prisoners reintegrate

into society or preventing them from re-offending. The situation is such that forced release

procedures are used as a flow management mechanism to release prisoners and allow new

incarcerations.

However, in the short term, this situation cannot be resolved by building new facilities,

as the current programmes will take a long time to complete and will have a major impact on

public finances. In addition, the prison administration is experiencing difficulties in running its

establishments, due in particular to ongoing tensions over the recruitment of its supervisory

staff. This difficult context makes it all the more necessary to choose between TIG and DDSE

on the one hand, and imprisonment on the other, especially as the cost of these two measures

is much lower than that of imprisonment: in 2022, the average cost of TIG was €1,862 and that

of DDSE was €2,788.

If these measures become more stringent in their implementation, and thus more

credible in the eyes of the judiciary, they may contribute to curbing the steady increase in the

number of prisoners, easing the excessive constraints on the prison estate and reducing the

investment required to build new facilities. This is also a key issue for the judicial system as a

whole, as the increase in criminal activity associated with high levels of recidivism requires

significant resources without satisfactory conditions for the execution of sentences. Last but

not least, it is crucial for both victims and convicts.

Measures whose effectiveness needs to be reinforced through closer monitoring

To achieve this, the interaction between prison probation services and court judges must

become more effective, and the presence of these services in the courts during hearings

should be experimented with.

Like other European countries, France also needs to better monitor the implementation

of alternative measures to imprisonment, by means of follow-up including home visits and

effective verification of the involvement of convicted offenders. The corollary to this

strengthening of supervision must be an intensification of support during the execution of

sentences. Despite the efforts of the Ministry of Justice, this support is still too limited, despite

the fact that the profile of convicted offenders is more marked in terms of social difficulties and

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more frequent repeat offences. It is now necessary to change the profile of the agents in charge

of this mission.

Change in the average number of sentenced persons monitored by probation officers

Source: Prison Administration Department

In this context, the trade-off for public authorities is the allocation of resources in a

complex budgetary equation. Delays in the roll-out of new prison construction programmes

mean that we must now mobilise the resources needed to ensure that TIG and DDSE

sentences are carried out under conditions that ensure they are as effective as possible,

through more assertive and closer monitoring of convicted offenders. Part of the 10,000 jobs

created under the 20 November 2023 Law on the Orientation and Programming of the Ministry

of Justice 2023-2027 could be used for this purpose. This reorientation in the allocation of

resources is a prerequisite for a more effective and efficient use of TIG and DDSE, in view of

which the Court makes nine recommendations.