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“Reducing the prison population: long-term experiences from Finland”

Lappi-Seppala, Tapio
June 4, 2015

Source: (2006) In, Crime Policy in Europe, Council of Europe, Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing pp. 139-155

“In Finland the criticism of the treatment ideology has since merged with that directed against an overly severe Criminal Code and the excessive use of custodial sentences. The resulting criminal political ideology was labelled as “humane neo-classicism.” It stressed both legal safeguards against coercive care and the objective of less repressive measures in general.
“Between 1970 and 1990 all the main parts of Finnish criminal legislation have been reformed from these starting points. The reform ideology, which guided the law reforms from the early 1970s onwards, represented a pragmatic, non-moralistic approach to crime problems. In this framework, the role of criminal law as a means of crime policy occupies a much less prominent place than before.” (excerpt)

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