Despite immense recent growth in the Netherlands in sanctions that can replace short prison sentences, the proportion of people admitted to prisons is relatively high by European standards because of an increased focus on less severe crimes, combined with relatively high use of pretrial detention. Many community service orders and supervision orders are imposed by prosecutors and judges for relatively minor crimes. Therefore, many sentencing decisions occur at the custody threshold, the border between custody and non-custody. The role of the probation service is crucial because it advises on sentences at all stages of the criminal justice system, including revocation of community penalties. Courts and prosecutors are largely dependent on the probation service’s recommendations, capacity, and willingness to supervise offenders, which raises questions about equal and fair application of sanctions and the independence of the final decision makers.

Developments in penal policy and sentencing in Poland between 2015 and 2025 were dominated by the effects of sentencing reforms introduced in 2015 to reduce a notoriously high incarceration rate, one of the highest in Europe, and reconstitute a system of sanctions dominated, as elsewhere in Central Europe, by use of suspended sentences. The effects were mixed. The use of suspended sentences decreased dramatically, and the use of fines and community service increased greatly. Those changes had little effect, however, on the incarceration rate. One cause of previous high rates was that a large proportion of suspended sentences were revoked following breaches of conditions; defaulters were often imprisoned for longer than if they had initially received an unsuspended prison sentence. History is repeating itself: since 2015, high numbers of fine and community service defaulters have begun to fill the prisons. The Polish criminal justice system is in general becoming more punitive: use of pretrial detention and immediate imprisonment is increasing, terms are becoming longer, and early release is declining. “Democratic backsliding” in 2015–23 under the populist Law and Justice government distorted the implementation of the 2015 reforms.

The creation of sentencing councils and the introduction of guidelines have made sentencing in the United Kingdom more transparent, predictable, and democratic. The systems in England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland share common elements, but important differences exist. Those in England and Wales are the most comprehensive. They are largely descriptive, reproducing rather than changing judicial practice, and have failed to prevent three problems: increases in sentence severity, prison overcrowding, and political interference. Prison sentence lengths have increased significantly and use of community orders has declined. Politics in England and Wales and Scotland continue to shape policy and sentencing practice. The government in England and Wales in 2025 commissioned a review of sentencing and introduced legislation to implement proposed changes, including creation of a statutory presumption against imposition of short prison sentences. Under the 2026 legislation, courts will, with some limited exceptions, have to find that “exceptional circumstances” exist before imposing a prison sentence of 12 months or less.

Most criminal laws in Japan are national in scope. Prosecutors enforce them with discretion, which they tend to exercise cautiously by charging cases only if they are all but certain to end in conviction. One result is a high conviction rate. By screening out cases that stand even a small chance of acquittal, this cautious approach limits the role that courts and defense lawyers play in the criminal process. Cases are tried before a single judge, a bench of three judges, or a lay judge panel consisting of three judges and six citizens. There are no formal sentencing guidelines, but well-established norms reflect a commitment to consistency. Recent reforms have given victims greater prominence in the sentencing process. Japan’s sentencing system recognizes the limited capacity of the criminal sanction to do good, but it also can be severe, with a harsh pretrial process. Death sentences, executions, and wrongful convictions also continue to occur on a regular basis. Scholarship about Japanese criminal justice sometimes characterizes the system as lenient and benevolent. There is truth in this, but because the country has little serious crime, the sentencing system may appear more lenient than it really is.

Western Europe knows not “mass incarceration.” Scholars and professionals worried, as crime rates rose for two decades through the 1990s, that America’s imprisonment boom portended something similar. That was avoided, partly by adoption of American innovations intended to divert people from prosecution or imprisonment. Sometimes policy transfer succeeds. Prosecutorial diversion programs, pioneered in New York and Washington, DC, in the 1960s and later adopted in many places, soon languished. European equivalents were widely adopted or expanded beginning in the 1970s and remain in extensive use. The prison alternatives trajectory is similar. Community service, restitution, victim-offender mediation, and electronic monitoring all were pioneered in the United States but were later deemed insufficiently punitive and ceased being widely used. In Europe, fines are the most commonly imposed prison alternatives, followed by community service and electronic monitoring. The European reaction to rising crime rates—diversion and prison alternatives rather than harsher sentencing and overcrowded prisons—resulted from reluctance to politicize the criminal law, commitments to human rights ideals, and strong social welfare traditions.

The countries of Central Europe have for many years occupied a leading position in Europe in imprisonment rates and the use of imprisonment. The reasons for this may be connected to having been under authoritarian rule for many years. Another factor may be the penal populism that is influential throughout the world but has specific features in Central Europe. One such explanation, “penal nationalism,” argues that exceptionalism results from a distinctive brand of nationalist attitudes, especially towards the European Union. Social welfare policies, egalitarianism, income inequality, and residents’ trust in one another and the state, among other factors, have repeatedly been shown to be associated with imprisonment rates. Central European countries usually score low, sometimes very low, on these measures. Other more prosaic explanations relate to national laws and policies that increase punitiveness generally, and the use of imprisonment, even though that was not their purpose. None of these considerations by itself explains why imprisonment rates are, and long have been, comparatively high in Central Europe, especially relative to Western Europe, but provide elements from which fuller explanations may emerge.