Swedish state prosecutor Anders Perklev will present a proposal to the government this fall to give repeat offenders more severe punishments. Judges curently have a limited possiblity of allowing a history of repeated criminality to affect a prison sentence.
In one notorious case, a man was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol 48 separate times. But he has never been sentenced to jail for more than 10 months; this, despite the fact that he has also been convicted of illegal driving, thievery, narcotics violations and other crimes.
“Our current way of thinking is based upon the principle that a crime is not more serious if the perpetrator has been punished previously. That means that the fact that it is a repeat offense has not been of great importance,” state prosecutor Perklev told Dagens Nyheter. (DN)
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