Lumiste urges tougher penalties for crimes against persons

In an opinion article published by ERR, Karl Lumiste, a law student at the University of Tartu and member of Isamaa, argues that Estonia must raise its penalties for crimes against persons because the law should condemn them more strongly.

Crimes against persons, set out in Chapter 9 of Estonia’s Penal Code, have drawn particular attention because of what Lumiste describes as excessively lenient sentences. He asks how much human life and health are worth in Estonia.

He cites a five-year suspended sentence for the sexual abuse of a girl under 10, a three-year-and-nine-month prison sentence for a mother who killed her newborn child, and a case last year in which a rapist received a one-and-a-half-year prison sentence that was suspended for a two-year probation period.

These are only some examples, Lumiste writes. Similar cases can be found not only in Estonia but also in other European countries where very lenient sentences have been imposed for crimes against persons.

Not all offences can be punished as severely as crimes against persons, he says. Such offences deserve the strongest condemnation because they violate legally protected interests to the greatest extent. Public criticism of the justice system’s perceived inability to respond effectively also sends the Riigikogu, Estonia’s parliament, a clear signal that penalties must be raised.

Lumiste also points to studies that support longer sentences. A 2005 US study examining the law-abiding behaviour of more than 25,000 people released from federal prisons over the following eight years found that recidivism, or repeat offending, declined with age. The rate was 65 percent among people under 30 and had fallen to 16 percent among those aged 60 and older.

Statistics also show that prisoners who had spent 10 years or more in prison were 29 to 45 percent less likely to commit a new offence than those who had spent less than 10 years behind bars, he writes.

“Longer sentences also restore society’s sense of justice and allow offenders to genuinely understand the seriousness of their actions,” Lumiste writes.

Although Estonia and the United States differ in many respects, the content and nature of violent offences are the same, he argues. Longer sentences are therefore particularly necessary for crimes against persons because they also reduce repeat offending.

Lumiste cites El Salvador as another practical example. Despite being located in a region associated with drug routes, the country reduced its homicide rate from 103 killings per 100,000 people in 2015 to 1.3 killings per 100,000 people this year.

Over a decade, El Salvador became one of the safest countries in Latin America after authorities began taking the fight against crime seriously, adopted measures to arrest as many criminals as possible and imprisoned them.

Although many convictions resulted from significant interference with fundamental rights, including broad police powers to intercept communications, make arrests and use force, Lumiste argues that these measures would have had no significance if criminals had not received long sentences capable of ensuring public safety and a sense of security.