Occupation: Petty Smuggler. On the Effectiveness of Carrying Out Selected Non-Custodial Penalties against Smugglers

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study on the effectiveness of carrying out community service (a penalty for committing a crime or misdemeanour which entails performing work for social purposes) and social work (where a fine can be converted into such work if the obligated person cannot pay it) by perpetrators of criminal acts related to the smuggling of goods. For the purposes of the current study, punishments consisting of work were defined as effective when they remained unchanged and were carried out as community service. The study found that if punishment in the form of work was applied to them, perpetrators of smuggling-related crimes or offences performed such work far more often than perpetrators of other criminal acts who were subjected to the same punishment (93.8% v. 65.1%). Moreover, it was established that criminal acts related to the smuggling of goods are committed equally often by women and by men (in this category of criminal acts, women comprised 46.2% of perpetrators, with the mean for all criminal acts and petty offences taken into account in the current study being 15%). The article concludes that the present results may suggest that perpetrators of such criminal acts or petty offences treat them as a way to gain additional income. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that many people had more than one sentence to serve for committing a criminal act related to smuggling.