Tímarit lögfræðinga - 01.10.1989, Blaðsíða 15

per cent of all criminal sanctions imposed on adults are imprisonment,
72 per cent are fines. 65 per cent of the prison sentences are suspended.
30 per cent of the suspensions have, however, to be revoked following
a new criminal act committed by the probationer. In this way less than
8 per cent of all sentences are really served under deprivation of
liberty. In Iceland, too, the rate of prison sentences is low and that of
suspended prison sentences exceeds 50 per cent. As to the rate of prison-
ers Iceland is on the low end of all European states. The fundamental
movement in favour of restricting deprivation of liberty in criminal
law has dominated the last two International Congresses of the United
Nations on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders,
held in 1980 in Caracas and in 1985 in Milan. There member-states
were unanimously requested to introduce such alternatives to imprison-
ment in their respective legislation as probation, suspended trial, sus-
pended sentence, community service and similar measures. This was
done in order to reduce the number of prison sentences which have
actually to be served. The resolutions adopted by both Congresses have
been confirmed by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
b) As far as I can see, Icelandic criminal law conforms to and accepts
these resolutions. I have already mentioned the “ultima ratio”-clause
in the Explanatory Statement accompanying the Criminal Law Bill
of 1940. Furthermore the Criminal Code takes a particulary advanced
stand in the matter of alternatives. As alternatives to every kind of
punishment the Icelandic Criminal Code, in Articles 56 and 57, provides
for conditional suspension of trial, of sentence and of execution of the
sentence. All these measures can be coupled with supervision in ac-
cordance with Article 58. The aim of supervision is assistance in the
search of room and job, as well as the regulation of debt for the
offender and care of the social problems for his family.
c) The indeterminate sentence — once a magic formula of criminal
policy — has become exceptional, since such leading countries in
criminal policy as England, California and Sweden have abolished it.
The reasons are obvious: avoidance of additional suffering for the
prisoner who does not know when his incarceration will end, and the
degrading constraint necessary to obtain by all means the favour of
the prison staff. It also aims at sparing the prisoner the unnecessary
and even counter-productive extension of the time to be spent in
prison, often connected with the indeterminate sentence, and the
arbitrary discretion of parole boards regarding the time of liberation.
Also the statistics on recidivism show that the results are not better,
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