Antti Häkkänen (NCP), the Minister of Justice, has revealed that the maximum punishment for child sexual abuse will be raised from four to six years’ imprisonment.
Antti Häkkänen (NCP), the Minister of Justice, has announced the punishments dished out for sex crimes, especially those against children, will be raised in Finland.
Häkkänen on Wednesday revealed that the government agreed to allocate a total of 870,000 euros for carrying out each of his proposals for tougher punishments for sex offenders at its newly completed, two-day framework session.
He proposed, for example, that the maximum penalty for child sexual abuse be raised from four to six years in prison and that a new penal provision for child rape be adopted to reduce ambiguity in regards to cases where the provisions on rape and child sexual abuse are currently applied simultaneously.
The aggravated rape of a child would henceforth carry a penalty of 4–12 years’ imprisonment, according to a press release from the Ministry of Justice.
Häkkänen also demanded that the procedures for assessing the repeat offender risk and supervising offenders released on parole be clarified.
“The objective will be to reduce situations where people with multiple sex or violent crime convictions or with a manslaughter conviction are released directly from prison without any of the support systems that make it possible to monitor them while on parole,” he explained.
He also recommended that the possibility of using imprisonment as a substitute for non-collectible fines be reinstated. His proposal would enable police officers to bring cases to district courts when the suspect has multiple previous fines and has demonstrated utter disregard for the law. The court would then be able to substitute the fine with a prison sentence if the fine is deemed non-collectible.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT Photo: Antti Aimo-Koivisto – Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi
