Report: Forty unenforced sentences time-barred, no prison sentences included

On 11 September 2019, Minister of Justice Anna-Maja Henriksson received a report from Ritva-Liisa Raatikainen, Director of the Legal Register Centre, concerning the investigation of the problems discovered in the enforcement of sentences.

The problems are related to RITU, which is an application for transferring information concerning the enforcement of sentences from district courts to the Criminal Sanctions Agency and the Legal Register Centre. During the years 2013–2019, at least 579 sentences have not been submitted to these authorities for enforcement.

The Legal Register Centre has gone through all the open cases. A total of 40 time-barred sentences that can no longer be enforced have been discovered. They are divided as follows:

- 29 fines, amounting to EUR 11,340;

- one juvenile punishment (4 months) that would not have been served in prison

- 10 judgments imposing damages, amounting to EUR 7,987.92.

There is not a single prison sentence among the time-barred sentences.

The sentences that were delayed the most and thus were at risk of becoming time-barred have already been transferred for enforcement. Thus, there will be no more time-barred cases. The district courts will take care of the transfer of the rest of the delayed sentences within the next few days one by one to ensure that all cases are transferred for enforcement appropriately.

“It is good that we have been able to figure out the problem so quickly. We now have an accurate picture of the extent of the problem, which is, fortunately, more limited than what we feared. I have been promised that all unenforced sentences will be transferred for enforcement effectively. Such a disruption in the enforcement of sentences must not occur ever again,” Minister Henriksson emphasises. 

So far, there is no indication of any system error. Based on the information currently available, it seems that the system users are responsible for the failure.

The problems were discovered as the Legal Register Centre, which operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice, examined payments made to it (fines) and noticed that for some of the fines no sentence could be found in the system. Problems have occurred since 2013.

Inquiries:

Permanent Secretary Pekka Timonen, tel. 029 515 0010, pekka.v.timonen(at)om.fi