This year's European Society of Criminology (ESC) conference "EUROCRIM 2024" took place in Bucharest, Romania. It is the furthest eastern city to host the once-a-year event that attracts criminologists from all over the world.

On 13 September, Dr Simonas Nikartas, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, gave his second presentation at the Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest. This time he joined the European Society of Criminology's Working Group on Community Sanctions section on "Punishment and rehabilitation: balancing competing goals?".

In his presentation "More probation, more prisoners? Community sanctions and mass supervision in Lithuania", the researcher spoke to the audience about the ever-expanding probation supervision network in Lithuania. Although Lithuania is often known for its high number of prisoners and long prison sentences, he said, Lithuania also has one of the highest numbers of people on probation in Europe.

Dr. Nikartas discussed the reforms of recent decades to reduce the prison population and to strengthen the resocialisation of offenders. As a result, he said, the volume of probation work has increased significantly. However, these reforms create the conditions for the expansion of criminal control, and probation measures such as electronic monitoring can have a separating effect, the researcher emphasised in his paper.