Bern, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – The effectiveness of day-fines, a system put in place in 2007 to replace short prison sentences with fines, will be debated by the lower house of Parliament Wednesday 3 June and the upper house a week later.
The system was approved by voters in 2002 and became part of the penal code in 2007, but numerous critics have said making criminals pay is not dissuasive. Suspended day-fines have come in for particularly heavy criticism.
The fines are based on a sliding scale that is linked to the severity of a crime.
Posted by Ellen Wallace on 2 June 2009 at 9:14, last updated on 3 June 2009 at 17:21 | permalink
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 2 June 2009.
Filed under: Society
Tags: day-fines, small crimes, Swiss news, Swiss parliament
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January 7th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
[...] terms for certain crimes, such as speeding, with “day fines” based on income. The system has come under fire for not being sufficiently dissuasive, particularly where suspended sentences are [...]