Hacker News Reader

Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

Denmark where life is max 16 years

Is that actually the law or some kind of convention?

Wikipedia says otherwise:

In Denmark, a life sentence (Livsvarigt fængsel in Danish) theoretically means life without parole: that prisoners will spend the rest of their lives in prison. However, prisoners are entitled to a pardoning hearing after 12 years.... Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment serve an average of 16 years, more for cases considered to be particularly grave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_Denmark

View on HN

I think in many European countries the maximum prison sentence is about 20-25 years, even for the worst crimes and even for multiple crimes combined, because they are usually not combined at all. Only the highest sentence is taken into account. There's no such thing as 200+ year prison sentences in Europe because you combine 15 offenses.

I don't even know what's the point of such sentences. Is it for PR purposes? "Look at us, we gave Osama Bin Laden 1,200 years in prison! Aren't we tough?!" Because it makes no sense to me. Just like it makes no sense to get a few years for rape or murder but be even charged with 30+ years for some online crimes.

You can't lump all of Europe together, they all have their own justice systems, very different from each other. Three terrorists in Spain were sentenced to about 30 to 40 THOUSAND years each.

Europe has many countries with many different legal systems so you can't make such blanket statements. Especially depending on how you define Europe.

>I don't even know what's the point of such sentences. Is it for PR purposes?

It is not for PR purposes, usually.

It is so that if a person is acquitted of one of the crimes they still stay in jail for the others. If someone gets 50 years for rape and murder and is later acquitted for murder, but not rape, they still serve their rape sentence.

The judge can decide if the jail time is served concurrently or consecutively.

It seems silly to give someone 3 life sentences, after all, you only have one life. But that means they'd have to be acquitted of 3 different crimes to get out of jail. The other reason is if those life sentences come with the possibility of parole after x years - by stacking those life sentences consecutively it would delay the parole hearings until after the person is dead.

Buy sometimes it is used to emphasize the crime's severity. Such is probably the case with the 40,000 year sentence for the Spanish terrorists. Even though they will only serve 40 years - the max allowed by Spanish law.

The situation wasn't much different in the U.S. a few decades ago. The average state prisoner served a third of their sentence. During the crime waves of the 1970's and 1980's, people voted to virtually eliminate that practice.

I just want to mention that this is within the ordinary system. If you're considered exceedingly dangerous that's just crazy. Better give you a treatment-sentence. That means a REAL life sentence.

Denmark had a guy who killed 4 policemen. They let him out 33 years later on a pardon; by then he was 71 and had server about 33 years.

My understanding is that they'll generally keep you if the experts have good reason to believe you're still a threat to other people, otherwise you get pardoned at some point.

There aren't very many of these sentences, I think you can find the complete list here in the Danish article on Wikipedia:

https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livsvarigt_f%C3%A6ngsel

About 50 since 1971.

I thought I'd never hear of a country with sane incarceration policy - by golly, don't imprison people past the point where they are dangerous, because then you are just spending money on pointless incarceration. Go Denmark!

Convention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palle_S%C3%B8rensen

Reply on news.ycombinator.com