From the beginning of the year, there have been a total of 167 offenders serving a community sentence. Of this number, 66 of them are still working for the community, whereas 101 inmates completed a community sentence.
The Law on Execution of Public Judgement and Community Sentence started to apply in 2014 and taking into account the average costs of an inmate per day in prison, as well as value of works performed on basis of this judgement, Montenegro managed to save approximately €850,000.
Alternative sentencing options actually decrease the number of jailed persons and thus improve prison capacities. The community work is performed across the whole country, based on the inmate’s residence. An employer provides work conditions and monitors the inmates’ work, and the commissioner of the Ministry of Justice supervises the offender and reports on his work to the relevant court.
Community work for offenders is voluntarily and it often happens they do not want to accept it. Some find such sentence (community service) harder to complete than jail terms and they would rather do a short stretch behind bars than complete a community sentence.
