Organised Crime & Crime Prevention - what works? - Scandinavian ...

NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
techinical and complicated (Lappi-Seppälä 1987, 658). The expediency of a criminal justice
system is measured through its general prevention (Lahti 1985, 259).
These two starting points - protection of the vital intrest of the community and general
prevention - are also closely connected to each other. It could be presumed that if the “vital
intrest of the society” are protected by criminal sanctions the “morals and values” of the
members of the society would be in harmony with the punishments for violating these values.
Its a nice circle. Of course, here lies at least two kinds of questions (a) how do we define these
vital intrests of the society, and - what is more important - who does this definding and (b)
how do we deal with those individuals who do not share those same “morals and values” as
the majority of the population? Part of the answer to the first question could be found in the
basic human rights and international conventions. The second part of the first question could
be answered by refering to democracy and its power and legitimacy. The second question has
been answered dozens of times by hundrets of theorist, but it still remains open. Behind these
complex questions lurke countless number of more questions.
Purpose of imprisonment?
Even if it is relatively “easy “ to form reasons to justify punishment as such, it is not as easy
to justify imprisonment as a form of punishment. The history of law and comparative law
indicates that there is no direct correlation between the systems of sanctions and the level of
crime; harder punishment do not necessarily degrease criminality and vise versa (Lappi-
Seppälä 1987, 665). The hardest sanction in Finnish penal code is lifetime of imprisonment
(for murder). The Criminal Law Commitee of 1972 particulary emhasized the heavy social
costs of imprisonment and thought the use of it should be minimized (Anttila &Törnudd
1992, 13). On the other hand, total abolition of prison sentences seems hardly possible.
The emhasis on general prevention as one of the main principles of the Finnish criminal
system easily leads easily to the conclusion that our reform ideology rejects totally individual
prevention. This is not altogether true (Anttila &Törnudd 1992, 14). Special prevention just
requires extensive discretion (Lappi-Seppälä 1987, 658). The role of the individual prevention
in penal institutions, and the role of imprisonment in our criminal sanctions system, has been
characterized by the following excellent words:
“To keep people in prison in order to cure them of their criminality is inhumane
and irrational, as systematic research can not give any basis for hoping that the
average offender will be less crime-prone after release. The period of time spent
in prison should, nevertheless, be utilized positively as far as possible - and if
there are certain categories of offences who can benefit from treatment, we should
of course offer them this opportunity”
(Anttila &Törnudd 1980, 48).
The less the sanction affects the rights of an individual - less harm it brings to the offender -
the smaller the risk of recidivism, and recidivism - in my opinion - is always a sign of a failed
criminal sanctions system. Keeping that in mind we can say that in the present system, the
risk of recidivism can be best lessened by avoiding the use of unconditional sentences of
imprisonment.
When sentencing recidivist the penal system in fact follows what could be called commonsense
policy of incapasitation. The selective incapacitation explicitly accepted only as a guide
159