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98 out of 100 people did not commit new crimes while on probation and justified the trust of the courts in the possibility of correction without isolation from society (the State Institution ‘Probation Centre’, Ukraine, January 06, 2022).
According to the Review of the Performance of the State Institution ‘Probation Centre’ for 2023, ‘in 2023, the probation authorities received information about the commission of a new criminal offence in respect of 2008 probation clients.’
According to the Review of the Performance of the State Institution ‘Probation Centre’ for 2024, ‘in 2024, the probation authorities received information about the commission of a new criminal offence in respect of 1747 probation clients.’
Therefore, a natural question arises, in our opinion: why do we need ‘their’ (i.e. European) probation with such recidivism rates, if the national probation service has several times lower rates?
The issue lies in entirely different approaches to assessing recidivism rates: while in Ukraine, the criterion is the commission of a recidivist offence during probation supervision, in most countries the criterion is whether the probationer commits a recidivist offence within a certain period (3-5 years) after probation supervision.
The approach where the criterion is the commission of a new crime solely during probation supervision is a simplification of the very understanding of the nature of probation, which turns the probation service into a bureaucratic apparatus focused not on strategic prosocial changes in offenders, but on tactical steps that deprive probation officers of incentives to work on the root causes of individual criminal behaviour. If we take the tactical approach as a basis, then, similarly, we can talk about the effectiveness of prisons in terms of whether prisoners commit crimes in penitentiary institutions and during their stay there.
Accordingly, the effectiveness of the probation service in Ukraine has never been assessed due to the dominance of a simplistic approach and the lack of assessment of the long-term effects of probation supervision.
For comparison, the table below shows the official statistics on recidivism in Ireland for one, two and three years after the end of probation supervision[1].
| Recidivism rates of probation clients | Percentage of people who reoffended after probation | Percentage of people who did not reoffend after probation |
| After 1 year | 25 | 75 |
| After 2 years | 39 | 61 |
| After 3 years | 47 | 53 |
It can be concluded that the percentage of recidivists after probation almost doubled during the second and third years.
[1] The Probation Service (Ireland) (2025). Reoffending rates for people on probation continue to fall with lowest one-year rate since 2008. URL: http://www.probation.ie
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