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CRIMINAL LAW.
313
the terms of a law passed in 1902 a criminal court is empowered under
certain conditions to direct that juvenile offenders of from 15 to 18 years
of age, in lieu of undergoing the ordinary penalty, shall be sent to a
penitentiary or Borstal Home.
The following punishments are inflicted by the law: the penalty of
death, penal servitude or imprisonment with hard labour, imprisonment
without hard labour, fine.
The penalty of death is not an unconditional sentence, the alternative of
lifelong imprisonment at any rate being always open to the judge. The entire
abolition of capital punishment has been recently mooted and won much
support.
Hard labour and imprisonment are the loss-of-liberty punishments known to
criminal code. Sentences of imprisonment with hard labour are for life or for
some specified term, the lowest being two months. For shorter terms
imprisonment with hard labour and imprisonment without hard labour run parallel to
each other, two months of the latter being deemed equivalent to one of the
former. The maximum sentence of imprisonment (apart from cases where more
than one crime has been committed) is two years, the minimum is one month.
One month is consequently in Sweden the shortest period for which anyone can
be sent to prison; that being so, there has been an absence in Sweden of the
unsatisfactory results observed in other countries to attend brief sentences of
imprisonment.
In respect to the actual serving of the sentences, the chief difference between
imprisonment with and imprisonment without hard labour consists in the former
embracing compulsory labour as an element in the pain or suffering to be
inflicted by the punishment, and also in the hard-labour convict not being
permitted to provide himself with food and clothing beyond what the prison
authorities supply. On this subject reference may be made for further information
to the article in the present work on Prison System.
Loss-of-liberty punishment for a short period (maximum, two years) may be
accompanied by afflictive hardship (plank-bed, combined if need be with
dark-cell confinement) in cases where the criminal has displayed exceptional savageness
or evil intent. Those sentenced to serve a longer term of incarceration may be
conditionally set at liberty before the expiry of their time.
Fines are dischargeable in money; their collection proceeds in the same way
as that of private claims. There are no stipulations regarding the payment of
fines by instalments or for their discharge by the delinquent doing an equivalent
amount of work in default of payment. If the fines cannot be paid in full a
special loss-of-liberty punishment is imposed in lieu thereof, which involves to
some extent stricter rules of observance than ordinary imprisonment.
Confinement to prison in lieu of fine is imposed for periods varying from three days
to sixty, the latter spell being considered to correspond to a fine of 570 kronor
and upwards.
By the terms of a law passed in 1906 the principle of conditional
release was introduced into Swedish criminal law. By that measure a
Swedish court of justice is empowered to order that the execution of a penalty
imposed shall be postponed, the delinquent in the meantime being under
probation. Should he pass through that period satisfactorily, the penalty
he was sentenced to undergo is cancelled once for all. The privilege of
this conditional release is only accorded to first offenders who have not
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