The Conservative party presented its justice platform ahead of the upcoming general election, with 17 proposals including harsher punishments for violent crimes.

The party also wants more power to legally dissolve criminal gangs and crack down further on gang members by removing their rights to benefits if they are given prison sentences.

People with previous convictions for assault or rape would be given double sentences for repeat offences under the proposal, with first convictions for rape and assault given 50 percent longer sentences.

Reckless driving should also result in harsher punishments including deportation for at least a year if the culprit is not a Danish national, the Conservatives propose.

“My feeling is that a sense of justice is crucial in a society. That victims should know that a perpetrator is punished, so perpetrators can’t go away – I’m about to say – laughing,” party leader Søren Pape Poulsen said at a briefing.

The Conservative proposal also includes a spending plan to reduce a backlog for processing criminal cases at courts.

“I’m a former justice minister and this issue is close to my heart. I spent almost all of my time as justice minister fighting gangs and putting them in prison, so this means something to me,” Poulsen said.

In a recent poll asking Danes for their three most important election topics, only 0.4 percent included crime as one of the three topics, according to news wire Ritzau.