A New Trend in Criminal Law in Finland

Abstract

For hundreds of years the role of punishment in combating criminality has been a subject of public debate. Each age has attempted to find better answers which would have the appropriate effects. The more distant the time one is speaking of, the easier it is to see it in the light of only one movement: we speak of the classical criminal law of the 1800’s, or the positivism of the first years of this century. We recall the main movements, those which gave the discussions of the time their typical flavor, either in Europe in general or at least in our own country. It is not quite as easy to dissect, for example, the main trends in criminal policy in Finland during the 1950’s and the 1960’s: we know more about these decades, we remember controversial debates and the polemics of experts. Even so, many are probably ready to agree that even these decades had their own central movements. One could simplify and emphasize matters by naming the 1950’s the ‘golden age of the treatment ideology’ and the 1960’s the ‘age of the reevaluation of the role of the official control system.’