Finland saw over 40 criminal sentences expire as the country s judicial system failed to forward a total of 579 criminal court rulings to the relevant enforcement agencies for five years. Most of the sentences were fines but the courts also handed down a prison sentence to a juvenile offender, who never went to jail.

In September it was revealed that a total of 579 sentences between 2013 and 2019 had become stuck  at the Legal Register Centre, an agency responsible for transmitting the convictions handed down by the district criminal courts to the authorities responsible for their enforcement. According to the initial reports, the officials could not tell whether the failure to enforce the vanished rulings was caused by human error or the fault of the computer system.

Since the anomaly has persisted for years, by the time the error was discovered the prescription period of some sentences has already expired. An inquiry into the case revealed that the majority of the unenforced rulings were fines and consequently a total of 20 thousand euros were never been paid by offenders to the Finnish state budget. One verdict, a prison sentence handed to a juvenile, has already expired because in Finland the statute of limitations is only 3 years in the case of young offenders (under 18 years of age).

V4NA has contacted Finland s justice ministry, headed by  Anna-Maja Henriksson, and asked: if the malfunctioning was due to human error, whose interest did the disappearance of the verdicts serve, and whether anyone has been held accountable for the evolved situation that seems to endanger legal certainty. We are yet to receive a reply but will publish them as soon as they become available.

V4NA has also asked the European Parliament s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) if the body responsible for examining rule-of-law issues has investigated whether the issue constituted a breach of legal certainty in Finland.

LIBE spokesperson Lina Lietzen told V4NA that „the committee has not discussed the issue. However, it can be included in the agenda with time, if it is seen as justified,” she added.