Enforcement of penalties

The Legal Register Centre and, if necessary, the National Enforcement Authority are responsible for the enforcement of fines. If a fine cannot be collected from the debtor, the prosecutor may under certain conditions demand that a court of law convert the fine into unconditional imprisonment. The Prison and Probation Service of Finland is responsible for the enforcement of imprisonment and community sanctions.

Community sanctions are:

• community service
• monitoring sentence
• conditional imprisonment enhanced by monitoring
• supervision of conditional release
• juvenile penalty.  

Before the court imposes a community sanction as the punishment, the prosecutor or the court requests the Prison and Probation Service of Finland to prepare a sanction report on the suspect. The purpose of this report is to ensure that the person in question is suitable to carry out a community sanction. The suspect may also request a sanction report to be prepared.

The prosecutor may demand that the court convert a community sanction into unconditional imprisonment or some other penalty if the terms of the community sanction are violated. If a person released on conditional release violates their supervision obligations, the prosecutor may request the court to enforce the remaining sentence.